
Class _J3S2M.r 
Rnnk '■ 35 

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COPVRIGHT DEPOSm 



GRACE IN GALATIANS 

A NEW AND CONCISE COMMENTARY 

ON THE 

EPISTLE 



BY THE 

REV. GEORGE SAYLES BISHOP, D.D. 

Pastor Emeritus of the First Reformed Church of Orange, N. J. 

Author of "The Doctrines of Grace," ** Shut up to Faith," 
" The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit," etc. 



GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE 

BIBLE SCHOOL PARK, NEW YORK 
1912 



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^fo«>^ 



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Copyright, 1912, by 
GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE 



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©C1.A346675 



PREFACE 

The Epistle to the Galatians speaks most em- 
phatically to the ^^ Drift of the Times." The 
Hammer of the Reformation — the grand 
Breakwater against the apostatizing spirit of 
the Apostolic Era, it again sounds to us and 
to the twentieth century, as with a clarion 
voice, the note of warning and alarm: '^Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. ' * 

The point of the Epistle is Disloyalty to 
truth already known. A worse thing this, 
than immorality and license, since it is the evil 
spring of both. The contrast here is empha- 
sized by the Epistles to the Corinthians, a 
church where lawlessness prevailed, incest had 
been condoned and strifes and divisions were 
in evidence. The Corinthians had gone the 
length of profaning the Holy Communion by 
eating as if the Bread were common bread and 
by drinking to intoxication from the sacred Cup. 
They had altogether failed to discern the 
Lord's Body in its mystical and spiritual man- 
ifestation and communication to their souls; 
yet, in spite of all this disorder and lawless- 
ness, St. Paul addresses them in terms of con- 
fidence and tender affection as ^^ Sanctified in 
Christ''— as '^called unto the fellowship of His 



PEEFACE 

Son Jesus Christ" — as *^ standing fast in the 
Gospel." 

Here, however, there is nothing of the sort. 
The apostle speaks with a coldness and reserve 
nowhere else to be found in all his epistles. 
God is patient with ignorance, but not with dis- 
loyalty. He can be lenient to a licentious 
Corinthian only just emancipated from terri- 
ble moral conditions — one who holds the truth 
so far as he has received it, but with much 
inconsistency of character and conduct. On 
the other hand. He cannot and He will not tol- 
erate a set and determined departure from the 
''faith once for all (hapax), delivered unto the 
saints." The renunciation of the true doctrine 
once known and received, is rife with every 
fatal consequence. God is patient with the 
want of light but not with trifling with the light 
once given. 

The Epistle to the Galatians is a recall. 
The Church must go back to the Old Gospel. 
She must cease tampering with the Word of 
God. She must cease from ''Revisions" which 
mean excisions, and from renderings which ob- 
scure and falsify the text. She must refuse to 
follow the lacunae of the Vatican MS., and 
the corruptions of the Latin Vulgate, incor- 
porated by interested men in new editions of 
the Sacred Scriptures undertaken as financial 
ventures bidding for the favor of all denom- 



PEEFACE 

inations whether orthodox or not. The hour 
and moment have come for a halt — for a reecho 
of the prophetic admonition: ^^Thns saith the 
Lord, stand ye in the ways and see, and ask 
for the old paths where is the good way and 
walk therein and ye shall find rest for your 
sonls." The nnrest, fever, superficiality and 
headlong reckless haste of the present '^down 
grade" in religion can only he met and checked 
by a powerful restatement, with a burning con- 
viction behind it, of those twin and fundamen- 
tal truths : The bottomless depravity and help- 
lessness of fallen man; and the absoluteness of 
the sovereignty in grace that saves him. 

The Church must go back to the Old Gospel. 
This is the challenge of God to the generation 
in which we now live. The Church must go 
back: she must say once more, **God forbid that 
I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ!" She must hold up again the 
Eighteousness of Christ as the only covering, 
shelter, and refuge of a naked, guilty, shelter- 
less, despairing soul. 

'^The clearness of the testimony is spoiled," 
says Spurgeon, *'when doubtful voices are 
scattered among the people, and those who 
ought to preach the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth, are telling out for doc- 
trines the imaginations of men, and the inven- 
tions of the age. Instead of revelation, we 



PREFACE 

have philosophy falsely so-called; instead of 
Divine infallibility we have surmises and larger 
hopes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ which is 
the same yesterday, to-day and forever, is 
taught as the production of progress, a growth, 
a thing to be corrected and amended year by 
year. It is a time of liberality — of broad 
views — of boundless Catholicity — of rapid 
drifting from the settled and the true. Let us 
cease, say men, to wait for a new birth: it is 
too long a process. Let us abolish the separa- 
tion between the regenerate and the unregen- 
erate — between the flesh and the spirit. Come 
into the Church, all of you, converted or un- 
converted. You have good wishes and resolu- 
tions ; that will do : do not trouble about more. 
It is true you do not believe the gospel but 
neither do we. Come along. You believe 
something or other; if you do not believe any- 
thing, it is no great matter. Conduct is better 
than creed. Your honest doubt is better far 
than faith in words spoken from heaven." 

'*If the world will not come to Jesus, says 
the modern thought, then let Jesus tone down 
His teachings to the world. To this end let 
us modify our doctrines. Some of them are 
old-fashioned, grim, severe, unpopular; let us 
drop them out. We can use the old phrases 
so as to please the obstinately orthodox but we 
can also dress them in new meanings so as to 



PREFACE 

neutralize their force and make tliem palatable 
to the natural man. The times are altered and 
the spirit of the age suggests the wise aban- 
donment of everything that is too severely 
righteous and too surely of God." 

These words of the great preacher present, 
without caricature and in most solemn colors, 
a true picture of the attitude of many and many 
a pulpit and of many and many a self-styled 
Evangelical Communion. To such — to one and 
all, the Epistle to the Galatians voices again 
the exhortation: Return, return! Resume the 
platform of Grace. Back to the Word of God 
and to Prayer : these, these alone are the power 
of God and His infallible method unto salva- 
tion. Semi-dramatic performances, musical 
displays, political harangues, rhetorical essays, 
sentimental appeals, the discussion of social 
conditions, these are neither the power nor the 
method: they are the accompaniments and 
proper badges of ** another gospel." *'But 
though we," cries the intense and the awaken- 
ing Apostle, *^But though we or an angel from 
heaven preach any other gospel unto you than 
that which we have preached unto you, anath- 
ema esto, let him be accursed." 



It may be proper, in connection with the 
above to state that the substance of the follow- 
ing commentary was given in Bible Readings on 



PEEFACE 

Sunday afternoons to an adult class numbering 
over seventy names on its roll. To tMs class, 
the book is especially 

DEDICATED 

with grateful acknowledgment of their increas- 
ing and enthusiastic interest, and with heartiest 
thanksgiving to that glorious Saviour whose is 
our only and our all sufficient righteousness — a 
righteousness in which we have no shred or 
finger of our own. 



INTEODIJCTION 

The object of the Epistle to the Galatians 
was to restore among them the pure Gospel 
which they had received, but which they had so 
mingled with human works and ceremonies and 
a notion of their own free will and merits, as 
to have well nigh lost it. St. Paul, first claim- 
ing his prerogative as an Apostle and infallible 
Teacher of the Church, denounces every other 
gospel than that which is founded on the Doc- 
trine of Grace (chap. I: 1-10). He then (chap. 
I: 10 to II: 21) gives a short sketch of his own 
life, conversion and ministry, ending with his 
celebrated rebuke of St. Peter at Antioch. 
Then, in the III and IV chapters he proceeds 
with a line of arguments in favor of justifica- 
tion simply and only by faith in the merit and 
righteousness of Another — i. e. the Lord Jesus 
Christ. He warns the Galatians against every 
temptation to mingle something with Christ as 
a ground of acceptance with God and ends this 
part of the Epistle with a splendid explanation 
of the Allegory of Sarah and Hagar. The V 
and VI chapters are a practical application of 
the whole subject, and the Epistle ends with the 
sublime conclusion, ''God forbid that I should 
glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 



THE GALATIAN APOSTASY 
^'ANOTHER GOSPEL" 



'* ANOTHER GOSPEL" 

CHAPTER I 

Introduction: Galatia, from Gallo-Grecia, 
embraced a colony of Gauls or Celts who had 
settled in Asia Minor. They inherited the 
mercurial character of their race and were 
easily influenced in one direction or another. 
These Galatians had been evangelized by St. 
Paul in his first missionary journey, but among 
them dwelt many Jews who opposed the Apos- 
tle and taught that something more than simple 
faith in Jesus Christ was necessary to salva- 
tion. St. Paul plants himself in direct contrast 
to these Judaizing teachers and opens thus di- 
rectly. 

Vs. 1. Paul^ an apostle (not of men, neither hy 
man, hut hy Jesus Christ, and God the Father, 
who raised Him from the dead) : Those who 
opposed St. Paul claimed that they had a higher 
right to speak tly&pi had he, for they were the 
disciples of the first 12 apostles and he was an 
outsider who came in afterward and with no 
original apostolical commission. To this St. 
Paul replies: I am an apostle for my calling 
is superior to that of those who are the disciples 
of any man. I received this office not through 



2 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

men, i. e. ecclesiastical order — nor hy man, i. e. 
by any human means or instrument, bnt directly 
from Jesns Christ who appeared to me from 
heaven on the way to Damascus. — (Acts 9: 3-5; 
Acts 22: 6; Acts 26: 13, 14; I Cor. 11-23, 1 Cor. 
15:8,9!) 

''But hy Jesus Christ and God the Father 
who raised Him from the dead,'' This is very 
emphatic because it at once sets forth the right- 
eousness of Christ. He does not say God the 
Father ^*who made heaven and earth, '^ or *^who 
is Lord of angels," or '*who called Abraham," 
but '*who raised Christ from the dead" for our 
perfect justification. — Eom. 4 : 25. 

Vs. 2. And all the brethren which are with 
me, St. Paul, when speaking of the brethren, 
speaks of them as subordinates. They are 
with him but he alone is an apostle. — I Cor. 
12: 28, 29, Eph. 4: 11. 

Unto the churches of Galatia. He does not 
say, *^The Church of Galatia," but he speaks 
of the invisible Church wherever there was a 
collection of its true members, even though some 
heresy were working within. 

Vs. 3. Grace he to you and peace, Grace 
the source of every blessing; peace the result 
of all. Grace which cancels sin, and peace 
which gives a quiet conscience. There can be 
no rest for any man until he hears the word of 
grace, receives it and boldly stands in it as his 



THE GALATIAN APOSTASY 3 

salvation. Then he has peace — not the peace 
of this world but a heavenly peace. Kom. 5:1; 
Phil. 4:7; John 14: 27; John 16: 33; Heb. 10: 
19-22. 

From God the Father and from our Lord 
Jesus Christ, A splendid argument for the 
Deity of Christ who, in this salutation is made 
one with the Father. To give grace and peace 
is not the work of any creature. 

Vs. 4. Who gave himself for our sins: Not 
for onr righteousness — ^not for onr fitness, our 
merits, our repentances, our tears, our fast- 
ings, our promises of reformation and of fu- 
ture obedience to law; but for our sins — our 
worst sins, our sensual and devilish sins, and 
for the whole of our sins past, present and to 
come. He gave Himself for them. He does 
not ask us to give ourselves in self denials for 
them. Putting Himself as their substitute He 
justifies the ungodly and does not ask them to 
be godly first. — Rom. 4: 5; I Tim. 1: 15; Isa. 
45: 22; Acts 13: 39. 

**For our sins." Notice especially the 
''our/' for religion lies in the personal pro- 
nouns. It is easy to say He gave Himself for 
others, but to say He gave Himself for me and 
to believe it, is the great triumph of faith. He 
gave Himself for my sins and they are gone. 

''That He might deliver us from this present 
evil world/' Man says, *^It is a beautiful 



4 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

world''; *4t is the best of all worlds"; ^4t is a 
good enough world." '^No!" says the Bible. 
^*It is an 'eviP world; a world of disappoint- 
ments — of charming dissolutions, a world 
* whose god is the devil and whose end is to be 
burned up.' Out of its snares, pollutions, and 
final destruction, Christ has delivered us." Heb. 
2: 14, 15; II Cor. 1: 10; II Pet. 2: 7-9; I John 
5:19. 

According to the will of God and our Father: 
According to His purpose. According to the 
election of grace. According to the covenant 
made with Christ as standing for His people 
before the world began. — Isa. 53: 10; Rom. 8: 
30; Eph. 1: 4; I Cor. 1: 26-28. How could we 
ever have been delivered from the present evil 
world if it had not been according to the will 
and choice, the purpose and predestination of 
God and our Father? Left to ourselves would 
we ever have chosen Him? Could we ever 
have done it? The mighty tug of a resolution 
strong enough to tear us from the world, are 
we capable of this? Bound up, as fallen with 
the ruins of a fallen world, can we put ourselves 
back where Adam was unf alien in Eden ? Who 
cannot see that conversion is an object of Al- 
mighty Grace, and must be in the line of an 
eternal purpose? 

Vs. 5. To whom he glory forever and ever. 
Everything that is not bad in us must be re- 



THE GALATIAN APOSTASY 5 

f erred to God alone. — Ps. 115: 1; Jer. 13: 16; 
I Cor. 4: 7. Amen! The apostle seals what 
he has now said with a certainty. Amen means 
something planted to stand. 

Vs. 6. ^^I marvel/' *^I wonder." It is an 
amazing wonder that having snch a free and 
glorions Gospel they should be tempted to ex- 
change it for a poor device to save or help to 
save themselves; as if the work of Christ for 
them were not done or were badly done when 
He cried, **It is finished!'' 

^'7 wonder!'' It is the strongest kind of re- 
proof clothed in the mildest expression. The 
apostle does not tannt them; he does not up- 
braid them; he does not speak harshly. He 
simply says: ^^I wonder/' *^I wonder." 

^^That ye are so soon removed." That you 
conld stand so boldly yesterday for what you 
repudiate to-day. The Galatians were a fickle 
people. Human nature is fickle; it is always 
inconstant and inconsistent. Staying power is 
only with God with whom is no variableness 
neither shadow of turning. ^^Some men are 
like mirrors which having no light themselves 
equally reflect what is before them for the mo- 
ment." 

Vs. 8, 9. But though we, or an angel from 
heaven. Here he stresses the tremendous con- 
trast. *^But though we, or an angel from 
heaven, preach anything other than I have 



6 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

preached or than yon have received ; twice over 

I say it, LET HIM BE ACCTJESED." 

Vs. 10. ''For do I now persuade men or 
God? or do I seeJc to please men?" Am I now 
responsible to a human tribunal or do I seek to 
cater to a human sentiment and win applause 
from men? If so I am no longer the official 
servant and ambassador of Christ. 

The point which St. Paul makes is that we are 
justified before God by a righteousness outside 
of and wholly apart from ourselves. Luther, 
using this epistle as the hammer of the Reforma- 
tion, laid down the proposition that ^* Justifi- 
cation by faith in the imputed righteousness of 
Christ is the one article by which the church is 
to be tested; and by it she either stands or 
falls.'' 



ST. PAUL'S APOLOGY 

AND 

APOSTOLIC VINDICATION 



ST. PAUL'S APOLOGY 

GALATiANs I — (Continued,) 

We have seen tliat false teachers had im- 
posed upon the Galatians by pretending that 
they had received their commission from the 
apostles. On the other hand they asserted of 
St. Paul that he was no apostle — that he was 
not one of the original twelve, nor had he ever 
been acknowledged by them, nor did he prop- 
erly report their doctrine. To this, St. Paul 
replies with boldness that his apostleship was 
directly from heaven and therefore it was far 
more illustrious than it would have been, had 
he received it from Christ while Christ was still 
on the earth and mortal, i. e., before His resur- 
rection. 

Nor does the apostle content himself with the 
mere assertion. He goes on to prove what he 
says by an appeal to facts, and he does this 
with the greater earnestness because the ques- 
tion touches the validity of his testimony in all 
future ages. He foresaw that the fiercest at- 
tacks upon Christianity would be made upon 
the Pauline doctrine. He therefore labors to 
show that, what he says, Christ says, since 
Christ is speaking through him. 

9 



10 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

'*It is not strange," says Spurgeon, **to hear 
certain dubious people assert — ^I do not agree 
with St. Paul.' I remember the first time that 
I heard this expression I looked at the individ- 
ual with astonishment. I was amazed that such 
a pigmy should say this of the great apostle. 
It seemed like a cheese-mite differing from a 
cherub, or a handful of chaff discussing the ver- 
dict of the fire.'' 

Vs. 11. **But I certify you, brethren that the 
Gospel which was preached of me was not after 
man,'* The notion that we are to be saved by 
something wholly outside of ourselves, with 
which we have nothing to do, is a notion that 
never was taught or conceived by the natural 
man. It is not only beyond him, but it is so ab- 
solutely opposed to his every instinct as a fallen 
creature that he cannot receive it. His first and 
final thought in life and death, is that he must do 
something — show something done on his own 
part — toward his salvation. A righteousness 
wrought out by Another and made over to him 
as a gratuity, is a mystery which he cannot un- 
derstand. He can only wonder at, despise and 
reject it. God's ways are not his ways nor are 
God's thoughts his thoughts. 

It is a very popular suggestion just now that 
there are glimpses of the true light in all re- 
ligions and that these glimpses are indigenous 
to man. The exact fact is that whatever 



ST. PAUL'S APOLOGY 11 

'* glimpses" there may be in other religions than 
the true, these are all but broken and uncertain 
relics of a Revelation once possessed, in Noah's 
time, by the whole world, and lost. Nor in any 
of these religions is there the most distant no- 
tion of St. Paul's doctrine of Election by the 
Father ; the Redemption of the elect by the Son 
and their Regeneration by the Holy Ghost. 
Such a teaching is not ' * after man. " It is not 
common to nor agreeable with human opinion 
or thought. I Cor. 2 : 14 ; Isa. 55 : 8, 9 ; John 1 : 5. 

Vs. 12. For I neither received it from man, 
neither was I taught it. St. Paul did not re- 
ceive the Gospel from man. He did not learn 
it from his parents who did not know it; nor 
from Gamaliel, from whom he got only prej- 
udices against it. Nor did he get it from the 
other apostles, for he did not know them and had 
not seen them. St. Paul's testimony was 
unique. While he did not differ from the other 
apostles, he was far beyond them. He learned 
nothing from them; they learned from him 
things which filled them with wonder. Gal. 2:6; 
IlPet. 3:15, 16. 

But by revelation of Jesus Christ. Justifica- 
tion by the obedience of Another, is so far above 
nature that we can neither see it, nor hold it but 
by a Divine revelation. Even once seen, so pow- 
erfully do doubt, distrust, anxiety and fears; 
the terrors of conscience and the dread of death 



12 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

contend against it, that we forget and lose sigM 
of it unless it be again and again brought back 
to ns by the Spirit of God who alone can illu- 
mine the dark abyss of the soul. Matt. 16 : 17 ; 
John 3:3; I Cor. 12:3; II Cor. 12:1-4; Acts 
22: 17; Luke 10: 21, 22. 

Vs. 13. For ye have heard of my conversa- 
tion in time past in the Jew's religion, how that 
'beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God 
and wasted it. St. Paul here employs a tre- 
mendous argument for his trustworthiness. 
'*No man ever opposed Christianity as I did. 
I voted in the Sanhedrim for the stoning of Ste- 
phen. I stood by as a witness. I spattered 
myself with the blood of believers in Christ. 
All at once, I was changed. Was that my 
work? Ponder the fact and judge for your- 
selves. ' ' Acts 9:1,2; Acts 22 : 4 ; Acts 26:11; 
I Cor. 15:9. 

Vs. 14. And profited in the Jew's religion 
above many my equals — *'my fellow students 
and my later co-religionists." St. Paul was no 
proselyte of the gate. He was born *^an He- 
brew of the Hebrews"; he could trace his pedi- 
gree both on the father's and the mother's side, 
back to Abraham. He was brought up at the 
feet of Gamaliel, the head master of all the Jew- 
ish universities. He knew the Scriptures bet- 
ter than the brightest Arab boy Imows the Ko- 
ran. He had them grained into the very fibres 



ST. PAUL'S APOLOGY 13 

of his memory. St. Paul knew the religion of 
works through and through. He could say with 
Luther, *^I punished my poor body with fasting, 
watching and praying far more than ever they 
have done, who find fault with me for preach- 
ing that we are justified by faith without the 
deeds of the law.'' St. Paul knew all about 
free will and merits, for afterward he writes 
with deepest feeling: *^So then it is not of him 
that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of 
God that sheweth mercy." Phil. 3:4-7; Phil. 
3: 8, 9; Eom. 10: 3, 4; Eom. 1: 16, 17; Gal. 3: 10, 
ll;Eom. 3:28. 

Vs. 15. But when it pleased God. Not, 
when it pleased me— not when I got good and 
ready — ^not when / chose, but when God chose 
who was beforehand with me. 

Who separated me from my mother's womh, 
and called me hy His grace. Salvation is from 
long before the cradle. '^Calling" is the effect 
of a Divine predestination. St. Paul's career 
of sin and of apostleship was all foreseen and 
foreordained before he was born — ^before he 
himself could either think any good thing, or 
do it. John 15:16; Eom. 8:30; Eph. 1:3, 4; 
Eph. 1:11; II Thess. 2:13, 14; I Pet. 1:2; 
I Cor. 1:26; H Tim. 1:9. 

Vs. 16. To reveal His Son within me. The 
light was shot into the camera of his soul. 
Christ was photographed within him. Some- 



14 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

thing was infused into Paul wMch never was 
in him before and never again will be absent. 
It was grace — a substantial, eternal reality. 
I Cor. 15:10; Col. 1:27; Gal. 2:20; Gal. 5:17; 
I John 3:9. 

To reveal His Son. Christ did not come to 
set forth a new law, but to set forth Himself, 
in contrast to all law-keeping, as our one and 
whole and only salvation. Gal. 3:22; Gal. 
3:24, 25. 

Immediately I conferred not with flesh and 
hlood. He did not need to — ^he had the as- 
surance and the satisfaction in himself. A 
man before he is converted is always asking, 
**What do my neighbors think? What do they 
think of me?" A man who once has Christ and 
knows it, measures himself no longer against 
other men. He has only Christ in his eye, Who 
stands for him for everything, and Who has 
set him free. I Cor. 2 : 15. 

Vs. 17. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to 
them which were apostles before me. He had 
no desire to compare notes with others, even 
the apostles. What he wanted was solitude — 
a chance to think it all over and take the joy, 
the liberty, the glory of it, in. 

But I went into Arabia. Three men, Moses, 
Elijah and Paul, were taken to Sinai, there to 
have visions of God. Think of St. Paul at 
Horeb, at *^the backside of the desert." Think 



ST. PAUL'S APOLOGY 15 

of Mm climbing the steeps of Sinai there to 
learn how Israel broke down beneath a broken 
law. Then how God rewrote the law a second 
time upon new tables and laid these up within 
that true Ark, the Bosom of Christ, never again 
to be broken, but to be kept for us, our answer 
and our righteousness at God's right hand for- 
ever and ever. Think of those three years in 
Arabia ! The Epistle of the Hebrews was con- 
ceived at Sinai. Oh, how glorious! Never be 
impatient of solitude. '^Paul went into Arabia 
with Moses and the Prophets in his knapsack 
and returned to Damascus with the Romans 
and Galatians in his heart." 



ST. PAUL AND TITUS 
THE QUESTION OF CIRCUMCISION 



ST. PAUL AND TITUS 

GALATIANS I AND H 

The Point wMch St. Paul is making in the 
Galatians is that we are saved out and out at 
once and wholly, by what the Lord Jesus Christ 
has done, without ourselves having a hand in 
it. Outside of us is the Blood that cleanses 
from all sin. Outside of us is the Obedience 
which fulfils the law, earns our salvation and 
cries '^It is finished!" Outside! we have only 
to looh and be saved — ^we have only to risk it 
on Christ and life eternal is ours. 

From the moment we believe, God sees us in 
Christ. He counts Christ's work as ours — His 
life-record as ours. What Christ has done 
stands therefore as our only righteousness be- 
fore God. That righteousness covers us. It 
shields us. ^^It is a robe which our best deeds 
cannot mend and which our worst deeds can- 
not mar." Christ for us and in our stead is 
the simple answer to all things. Eom. 1 : 16, 
17; Ps. 84:9; Ps. 32:1; Isa. 61:10; II Cor. 
5:21; Jer. 23:6; Ps. 71:16; Phil. 3:8, 9. 

The Gospel teaches, not what we are to do 
for God but wTiat God has done for us; and 
this knowledge is so glorious that it transcends 
all thought of flesh and blood. * ' The heavens, ' ^ 

19 



20 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

we read, '^drop down and pour down right- 
eousness," — (Isa. 45:8); as helpless as is the 
earth to procure the rain that falls upon it, so 
helpless is the soul to procure this free gift of 
God, the righteousness of Christ, to cover and 
to cheer and make it fruitful. Who cannot, 
therefore, see that faith is a tremendous victory 
over sin, death, douhts and fear of hell and all 
this evil world — and that the faith which thus 
takes hold of righteousness outside of it to 
save it, is and must be the free gift of God 
Who alone creates such a faith and keeps its 
eye fixed on Christ and preserves and renews 
it within us I 

Vs. 18, 19. Then after three years I ivent up 
to Jerusalem to see Peter ^ and abode with him 
fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I 
none save James, the Lord's brother. St. Paul 
was in Arabia three years then; when he re- 
turned, he went up for the first time to Jerusa- 
lem to see Peter. To see him, not to learn any- 
thing from him, for his doctrine had been al- 
reSSSy systematized amid the solitudes of Mt. 
Sinai. So far as theology was concerned Peter 
could teach him nothing. Gal. 2 ; 6 ; II Pet. 
3:16. 

Vs. 20. Now the things which I tvrite unto 
you, behold, before God I lie not. Why should 
he swear that he had not seen Peter or James 
or any of the other apostles before? Simply 



ST. PAUL AND TITUS 21 

because the question between the Galatians and! 
bimself was one of life and death. If Paul 
was not a genuine and independent apostle — 
if he did not take the place of Judas — if he did 
not get his commission from Christ directly — 
and from Christ in glory — then his testimony is 
valueless ; then one-half of the New Testament 
written by him goes for nothing. He takes his 
solemn oath, therefore, that he had no collusion 
with other apostles — that he got all from Christ 
and nothing from them. 

Vs. 21. Afterwards I came into the regions 
of Syria and Cilicia, That is as far as pos- 
sible from collusion with the other apos- 
tles. 

Vs. 22, 23. And was unknown hy face unto 
the churches of Judea. But they had heard. 
Even remote as were St. Paul's labors the ru- 
mor of them went through all Palestine and 
penetrated to the very regions where the other 
eleven apostles were. If the churches of Judea, 
from mere report alone had been led to glorify 
God for what He had wrought in St. Paul, how 
disgraceful was it, in the contrast, for those 
who had the man and facts before them, to 
refuse to do so. 

Vs. 24. And they glorified God in me. 
'* Judea and Jerusalem itself glorified God in 
me — recognized His mighty power and Divine 
commission in me. Who then are these ob- 



22 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

scure men in Galatia that they should subvert 
my teachings and vilify me?" 

They glorified God in me. As the snn in a 
mirror they saw the marvels of God's grace 
reflected in St. Paul. Ps. 50: 15; I Cor. 6: 20; 
Matt. 5:16; Eom. 15:6; Kom. 15:9. 

CHAPTER II 

Vs. 1. Then fourteen years after I went up 
again to Jerusalem, This refers to the occa- 
sion of the great contention at Antioch with 
reference to circumcision. Turning to Acts 
XV, we learn that this contention was a very 
sharp one and threatened to make shipwreck of 
the Church. It was therefore determined to 
refer the vexed question to a Council or Synod 
of the Apostles and Elders to be held in Jeru- 
salem. The question was not of circumcision 
alone. It ran deeper. It was the question, 
whether anything in the way of law-keeping is 
necessary to justification or not; or whether 
so far as his justification is concerned, the law 
is dead to the Christian and the Christian dead 
to the law. Gal. 2: 19; Kom. 7:6. (See mar- 
gin for proper reading **We being dead to that 
wherein we were held — that is the law.") 

I went up with Barnabas and tooJc Titus with 
me. He took Barnabas as a witness to con- 
firm what he had to say, and Titus as an ex- 
ample of those Gentile Christians to whom, al- 
though uncircumcised and although they did 



ST. PAUL AND TITUS 23 

not keep the law, the Holy Ghost had been 
given. The Holy Ghost never came down npon 
men under the preaching of rites and cere- 
monies and merits and circumcision as neces- 
sary to justification, but He did come down un- 
der the preaching of Salvation by the work of 
Christ alone. Gal. 5:6; Gal. 5:2; Col. 3 : 11 ; 
Gal. 3:10, 11; Eom. 4:9, 10; Gal. 6:15; Acts 
10:44, 45; Acts 15:7-11. 

Vs. 2. And I went up by revelation. He 
did not go because the apostles commanded 
him, but he went because he had a positive in- 
timation from heaven. God called him to go, 
or he would never have gone. 

And communicated unto them privately, St. 
Paul felt that he must carry his point or else 
what he had done and what he hoped to do 
would come to nothing. It would appear that 
he had been running in vain and would so run 
in the future. In that case his career would 
be ended. Prov. 24:27; Prov. 22:3; 27:12; 
Ps. 37:5. 

Vs. 3. But neither Titus, being a Greek, was 
compelled to be circumcised. When St. Paul 
arrived at Jerusalem, every pressure was 
brought to bear to compel him to surrender his 
principle by consenting to circumcise Titus. 

Vs. 4. And that because of false brethren 
unawares brought in, who came in privily to 
spy out our liberty, that they might bring us 



24 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

into bondage. The Gospel is always above 
board. Its doctrine is plain — its methods are 
open and in evidence. The men who contended 
with Panl could not meet him in argument; 
they therefore had recourse to subterfuge. 
Ps. 125 : 5 ; Prov. 11 : 18 ; II Cor. 11 : 13, 14. 

Vs. 5. To whom we gave place by subjection 
no, not for an hour. '* Truth,'' says Bengel, 
*^ precise, unaccommodating, abandons nothing 
that belongs to itself, admits nothing that is 
inconsistent with it." A deadly snare had 
been laid for the apostle. Had he fallen into 
it and compromised the truth, by admitting cir- 
cumcision to be necessary to salvation and by 
actually circumcising Titus, he would have rung 
the death-knell of the Gospel. He knew this. 
He therefore met the situation boldly — carried 
the whole Synod with him — shamed his op- 
ponents and went back to Antioch with the 
glory of a complete vindication for all time, 
and the endorsement of those very apostles 
whom his false accusers had cited against 
him. 

That the truth of the Gospel (or the true Gos- 
pel) might continue with you. The true Gos- 
pel is that our righteousness is that of Christ 
alone with no mixture. The false gospel says 
you must have something else in addition — 
feelings or promises or works. This throws 
a man back from Christ upon himself, and into 



ST. PAUL AND TITUS 25 

suspense, perplexity and misery. Gal. 5:3; 
Kom. 4:14; Gal. 3:22; Kom. 11:6. 

Vs. 9. And when James, Cephas and John 
who seemed to he pillars, perceived the grace 
that was given unto me they gave the right 
hands of fellowship. So magnificently did St. 
Panl receive the whole Chnrch's endorsement 
— so clearly was it manifest that there is but 
one only true Gospel. 

** Complete atonement Christ has made, 
And to the utmost farthing paid 

Whate'er His people owed; 
How then can wrath on me take place 
If shelter 'd in His righteousness, 

And sprinkled with His blood T' 



THE EEPEOOF OF PETER 

AT 

ANTIOCH 



THE EEPEOOF OF PETER 

GALATiANs II — (Continued.) 

We now approach the heart of this Epistle 
which, concise as it is, we may regard as the 
Keystone of the New Testament, for in it is 
most conspicuously set forth and defended the 
right answer to the question, fundamental to 
all others, ^^How shall a man be justified before 
God?" The entire scope of Revelation comes 
to a point in the answer. This gives to the 
Reproof at Antioch a supreme significance. 
No issue could be more tremendous, for on it 
was suspended the survival or the early ship- 
wreck of the Church. 

One figure stands apart, superb, colossal. It 
is that of the great apostle to the Gentiles. 
The crisis called for a man, and the man, in 
God's providence, was there. As in the case 
of Joseph, of Moses, of Samuel, of David, of 
Elijah, of Daniel, the situation depended on one 
individual. God has but small use for commit- 
tees and corporations ; His greatest works from 
the Cross downward have been wrought by sin- 
gle men, single eyed and nerved for the emer- 
gency — '*I called Abraham alone and I blessed 
him." St. Paul was called ** alone"; no cap- 
ital was behind him, no society, or party was 

29 



30 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

behind him; no apostle was behind him; even 
[Barnabas deserted him. Like Athanasius and 
like Lnther at a later time, he stood alone. 
Isa. 51 : 2 ; Eccl. 9 : 15 ; Jer. 1 : 6, 7 ; Jndg. 6 : 34. 

What did he stand for? Christ and Christ 
only as the sinner's justification: Christ and 
Christ only as over against and in the sharpest 
contrast to everything outside of Christ. It 
was either Cheist or nothing. He must be all 
in all in salvation. *^ There is no such thing 
as Christ's doing His part to save us and our 
doing our part. We have no part save that 
of the beggar who, empty handed, takes a 
gratuitous alms." — So thunders St. Paul. 

Vs. 11. But when Peter was come to An- 
iioch. This was after the council held at Je- 
rusalem had recorded the unanimous decision 
that the Gentiles were not to be troubled with 
any question of circumcision or of law-keeping 
for salvation, but were to be pointed only to 
**the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." Acts 
15:19. 

1 withstood him to the face, because he was 
to be blamed, St. Peter had become a reaction- 
ary. The rock man was again on the wave. 
His willingness to please the Jewish members 
of the Church in Antioch, led him to withdraw 
from the Gentile believers with whom he had 
previously been in communion and to place him- 
self as it were in protest against them. 



THE EEPROOF OF PETER 31 

Vs. 12, 13. For before that certain came 
from James, he did eat with the Gentiles . . . 
and the other Jews dissembled likewise with 
him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried 
away with their dissimulation, St. Peter was 
not ignorant here, for he ^^ dissembled" and if 
so, he knew what he was doing, but his desire 
to stand well with the Judaizing party in the 
Church, which was the more influential, led him 
to compromise the truth and so to split a bot- 
tomless chasm between himself and St. Faul. 
For, says Luther, *^This fall of St. Peter was 
so sudden and so great as if it had been from 
heaven above even down into hell." For St. 
Peter, in contradiction to himself (see Acts 
10: 43; 15: 10, 11), was now teaching that men 
are saved by the law and gospel together, 
whereas, **as many as are of the works of the 
law" — as many as are having to do with the 
law, in any respect for salvation — **are under 
the curse." 

For before that certain came. See how weak 
and vacillating a thing is grace, even in the 
strongest of saints. One would think that after 
having witnessed the conversion of Cornelius, 
after having baptized him, though uncircum- 
cised, and after having defended this action in 
the Jerusalem Council, St. Peter would have 
shown himself immovably consistent. Expe- 
rience, however, proves that no man is im- 



32 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

movably consistent, and that, however clear 
may be our vision of Christ outside of ns for 
US, the instant Satan and temptation come, 
and unbelief sets in, Christ becomes clouded 
and we find ourselves looking inside instead of 
outside and fixing our eyes on our record, our 
merits, our resolutions, our failures, and Christ 
is lost from our view and we are in the mixed 
condition of Peter and Barnabas. 

Vs. 14. But when I saw that they walked 
not uprightly according to the truth of the Gos- 
pel, The truth of the Gospel is the true Gospel, 
in which there is not an atom of law, for the 
law and the Gospel are as diverse as, in the 
question of food, is a stone and an apple. A 
stone is good in its place to build a wall with, 
but for food it is death and so is the law good 
for morality, but not for salvation. '^Ohl put 
in a little law," say some. Well: glass is good 
but not for food, nor does powdered glass even 
a very '^little'' mixed with pure food contribute 
anything but death in agony. 

I said unto Peter before them all, If thou 
being a Jew . . . ^* If you though circumcised 
have yet, as in the case of Cornelius and here 
again in Antioch, thrown circumcision away, 
why do you oblige uncircumcised men to be 
circumcised?" 

Vs. 15, 16. We . . . knowing that a man is 
not justified hy the works of the law, hut by the 



THE EEPEOOF OF PETER 33 

faith of Jesus Christ even we have believed for 
that kind of justification: for hy the works of 
the law shall no flesh he justified. 

Vs. 17. But if while we seeh to he justified 
hy Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, 
is therefore Christ the minister/' or the occa- 
sion, '^of sinf He is, because He says *^ Trust 
Me!" and right after He says **But that is not 
enough — you are not saved by that alone. You 
are still sinners unless you fulfil the demands 
of the law." In such a case, he who teaches 
men to trust Christ out and out, is himself a 
sinner and makes them sinners and deceives 
them for then that is not enough! 

Vs. 18. For if I huild again the things which 
I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor, St. 
Peter had done this. He had built the house 
of Cornelius and others upon the rock of sim- 
ple faith. Now he comes and throws down that 
house, builds another and makes himself a glar- 
ing contradiction. 

Vs. 19. For I through the law am dead unto 
the law. The law slays its votaries. 

''Since to convince and to condemn, 
Is all the law can do." 

Ask a man with the smallpox to look into a 
looking-glass. What will that do? Cause him 
surprise and pain and distress. Can the look- 
jng-glass take tjje §cars from his face? The 



34 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

more he looks into it the worse he feels. That 
is salvation by law. ^^I have had enough of it; 
I am dead to it," says St. Paul. 

That I might live unto God. Because I am 
dead, have I lost my life? By no means, for I 
have a new life — I am raised with Christ and 
live in Him nnto God. To live nnto the law 
then, is to die unto God; and to die unto the 
law is to live unto God. For nothing is re- 
quired of us but faith in Christ alone. 

Vs. 20. I am crucified with Christ, How? 
By ^^ walking in His steps" — ^by imitation and 
by example? No, but by being one with Him 
as my Substitute. What He did, I did, for He 
did it for me. 

Nevertheless I live; yet not I. It is not the 
old I. It is no longer Saul of Tarsus, but Paul 
the ^* chosen vessel," the *^new creature." 
*^He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." 

But Christ liveth in me, Christ looks 
through my eyes; hears through my ears and 
speaks through my mouth. I am not any 
longer an ^^evil tree" bringing forth the evil 
fruits of works and resolutions and a blinded 
conscience, under the law; but I am a ^^good 
tree" bringing forth the good fruits of grace; 
of Christ dwelling in me. Gal. 5 : 22, 23. 

^And the life which I now live in the flesh, I 
live hy the faith of the Son of God, i. e. sus- 
pended on the Son of God — to the world, a 



IIHI 



THE EEPROOF OF PETER 35 

mystery, but to me the sublimest reality. 

Who loved me, and gave Himself for me. 
Not that I loved Him and gave myself in fast- 
ings, tears and painful sufferings for Him, but 
He for me. He loved me or I had never loved 
Him. His love eternally antedates mine. 

Vs. 21. I do not frustrate the grace of God, 
Grace is frustrated if it be mixed with anything 
but itself. ^^If it be of works, then, it is no 
more grace." One drop of vinegar in a glass, 
of milk sours it. 

For if righteousness come hy the law, then 
is Christ dead in vain. If He is not dead in 
vain, but in perfect fulfilment of the law for our 
justification, then there is no room any longer 
for law work. If there still is room for law 
work then He died in vain and the Gospel is a 
fraud and a fable. 

*'Thy works, not mine, Christ, 
Speak gladness to this heart ; 
They tell me all is done; 
They bid my fear depart. 

What Jesus is, and that alone, 

Is faith's delightful plea; 
It never deals with sinful self 

Nor righteous self, in me." 



SEVEN IMPEEIAIi 

ARGUMENTS 

FOR 

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 



BMnHHiimiliM 



SEVEN IMPERIAL ARGUMENTS FOR 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 

GALATIANS III 

After reviewing the scene at Antioch where 
he rebuked St. Peter for his dissembling, St. 
Paul now advances to a formal defence of the 
doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, in 
seven supreme and magnificent arguments. 
These arguments he makes more direct and 
incisive by resuming the language of personal 
address. 

Vs. i. Foolish Galatians, It is not so 
much * thoughtless, " * Volatile'' Galatians. 
St. Paul is not just here alluding to their na- 
tional characteristic of changeableness ; what 
he emphasizes is their '^anoety'^ — the stupidity 
of their minds: their inability to take in the 
terrible consequences of their apostasy. 

Who hath bewitched you? The seductive in- 
fluences which have led you away, have a cause 
back of the human instrumentality. Satan is 
behind these false emissaries who seek to un- 
dermine my work. They charm; they fasci- 
nate; they promise to lead you into broader 
and more advanced views. They tempt you 
to abandon your orthodoxy that they may make 
shipwreck of your souls. The Church is al- 
ways in danger of being bewitched — Ritualism, 

39 



40 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

Gnosticism; Arins, Pelagius, Arminius repeat 
themselves in every age. There is witchery 
in the very air at the present time, Socialism, 
Spiritualism, Christian Science, Necromancy 
or intercourse with the dead. Men, as a rule, 
worship humbug. 

That ye should not obey the truth. Literally, 
that ye should not be confidently persuaded of 
and stand fast in the truth. 

"What is the Truth? The apostle has already 
and in the preceding verses declared it : A man 
is not justified by the works of the law, but by 
faith in Christ only. 

** Except ye be circumcised ye cannot be 
saved'': said the seducers. Acts 15:1. 

**If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit 
you nothing": says St. Paul. Gal. 5:2. 

It is a sharp antithesis — a diametrical op- 
posite. You must take your choice, — Be cir- 
cumcised and lose Christ, or Trust Him and 
stand against every addition to His atonement. 
*^For, if we are justified by Christ," says St. 
Paul, ^^we are justified perfectly;" but, if so, 
what has circumcision or law work of any kind 
to do with us? Nothing. If we are not per- 
fectly justified by Christ, then we are justified 
imperfectly — then, not at all, for what is the 
good of an imperfect justification? In that 
case Christ is profitless — He dies in vain. 

But we are justified by Christ only — by what 



SEVEN IMPEEIAL AEGUMENTS 41 

He is, hy what He has done and hy what He 
has suffered in our stead, as our Substitute — 
hy that only, 

ARGUMENT I 

CHKIST IS SEEN BY FAITH ONLY 

Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath teen 
evidently set forth, crucified among you. The 
first object presented to you in your uncon- 
verted state was Christ — Christ only, Christ 
crucified — Christ your Substitute. He was put 
before you evidently — ^painted, proegraphe — 
hung up like a Great Poster on a wall — Christ, 
the Alpha and Omega in religion — the Begin- 
ning, Middle, End — ^the All in All. Some 
preach a vague and indistinct Christ — a Christ 
who did something or other, no one knows what 
or just to what purpose. No such a preacher 
had been St. Paul. II Cor. 1:2; Eom. 10:4; 
I Cor. 1: 23, 24; Gal. 6: 14. If you wish to be 
right in religion, get the right thing before you. 
We are saved by two things, 1st, Christ obeying 
the law for us; 2d, Christ washing away our 
sins in His Blood — In other words: by Christ 
our Substitute. When it comes to Salvation, 
there is nothing but Christ only. We need 
not only to have this '* before our eyes" but to 
have our eyes opened. 

ARGUMENT II 

THE SPIEIT IS GIVEN WITH FAITH ONLY 

Vs. 2-5. Received ye the Spirit hy the worlds 



42 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

of the law, or hy the hearing of faith? Here 
he again appeals to their experience. How, 
and when did the Holy Ghost come to you? Not 
by the preaching of circumcision and the law 
— of sacraments and ceremonies and efforts 
and feelings. The Holy Ghost never came in 
that way. He comes, as He came to Cornelius, 
by the *^ hearing" or preaching of faith. That 
is the only preaching that the Spirit of God 
will endorse, and He endorsed it among you. 
You were saved by your ears; not by your 
hands or the will-work of your resolves and 
your efforts, but by dropping self out of sight 
and simply drinking in Christ by the Word of 
the Gospel. Eom. 10:17; Acts 11:14; Eph. 
1:12, 13; John 7:38, 39; Acts 5:31, 32. 
AEGUMENT III 

ABEAHAM, THE FATHEE OF BELIEVEES, WAS JUSTI- 
FIED BY FAITH ONLY 

Vs. 6-9. Even as Abraham believed God and 
it was accounted to him for righteousness. 
The Galatians would wish to be justified as 
was Abraham. No man will go wrong who is 
justified as was the father of the faithful. But 
how was Abraham justified ? By faith and not 
at all by works which had nothing to do with 
his justification. 

But was not Abraham justified before God by 
the offering up of Isaac? Never; for he was 
justified 25 years before Isaac was born. He 



SEVEN IMPERIAL AEGUMENTS 43 

was justified 10 years before he was circum- 
cised. Abraham's faith was justified before 
men by the offering up of Isaac, as says St. 
James, but the offering up of Isaac did not 
justify Abraham before God. No works of 
fallen man can do that for a moment. Gen. 
15:6; Rom. 4:2; Rom. 4:9, 10; Rom. 4:13; 
Rom. 4:20-25. 

ARGUMENT IV 

THOSE WHO DEAL WITH THE LAW, AEE UNDER THE 

CURSE 

Vs. 10. For as many as are of the works of 
the law are under the Curse. You cannot be 
justified by the law or have to do with it in any 
way for justification without getting a curse, 
for the law can only condemn you. *^Am I 
seeking or vowing to obey God in order to get 
a blessing from Him? I only earn a curse. I 
ought to obey; but being a sinner, the effect 
of the law is to bring out my sin and to curse 
me.'' Rom. 7:9, 10. 

For it is written, cursed is every one that 
continueth not in all things which are written 
in the hooJc of the law to do them. If I start 
to make a record, I must keep on to the end 
and make a perfect, flawless record — the record 
of an angel. Since this is impossible, I had 
better drop the law as I would a hot iron. 
**But, has the law no place, or value?" Surely 
it has, for it is written *^ Trust and do good." 



44 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

But trust comes first and saves. Then, saved, 
we do good: for after justifying, faith is not 
idle. Gal. 5 : 6 ; II Pet. 1:5; James 2 : 17. 
AEGUMENT V 

LIFE IS, ABOVE THE LAW, BY FAITH 

Vs. 11. But that, no man is justified hy the 
law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, the 
just shall live hy faith. The jnst, or the justi- 
fied shall live by faith: if they are going to 
live so, they must begin so. In other words 
the whole progress from conversion to the 
grave is from faith to faith — from one degree 
of faith to another. He who is righteous, is 
righteous, not by his own works, but by the 
obedience of Christ. If so he does not live by 
any law-work whatever. This text is found 
four times in the Bible. Habakkuk 2:4; Eom. 
1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38. 

AEGUMENT VI 

CHKIST HAS PUT AN" END TO THE LAW BY MEETING 
ALL ITS CLAIMS 

Vs. 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the 
curse of the law, being made a curse for us: 
for it is written, Cursed is every one that hang- 
eth on a tree. The Spotless One was put into 
the sinner's place: yes, into the place of all who 
ever shall be saved, and all their sins were laid 
upon Him. All the sins of Mary Magdalene 
— all the murders of Saul of Tarsus and de- 
nials of Peter. '* Whatsoever sins, I, thou andi 



SEVEN IMPEEIAL AEGUMENTS 45 

we all have done or shall do hereafter," says 
Luther, ^*they, by imputation were made 
Christ's own sins, as truly as if He had done 
them, and His righteousness in return is made 
ours as truly as if we had never sinned but had 
always been as righteous as Christ was.'* II 
Cor. 5:21; Isa. 53:5, 6. For this reason He 
was hanged, i. e., suspended between heaven and 
earth as not fit for either — ^being rejected of 
men and forsaken of God. A curse is more 
than a threatening ; it is a downright execution. 
There is no other Gospel than this: You must 
either be cursed for God forever, or see Christ 
a curse for you. 

AEGUMENT VII 

GOD PEOMISES EVERYTHING TO T'AITH 

Vs. 15. Though it he hut a man's covenant, 
yet if it he confirmed, no man disannuleth or 
addeth thereto. You cannot change even a 
man's promise once it is sworn to; how much 
less can you change the promises of God. 

Now to Ahraham and his seed, i. e., to all 
who believe upon Christ who is Abraham's seed, 
were the promises made. Promises are bless- 
ings without a condition. 

Vs. 17. And this I say that the Covenant 
which was confirmed hefore of God in Christ, 
the law, which was 430 years after, cannot dis- 
annul that it should make the promise of none 
effect. If a man earns something under con- 



46 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

ditions he brings me into Ms debt. But, if I 
give something to him, there is no law work. 
If I say, '^I give yon that ten acre lot without 
a condition, ' ' and then, six months after, I say, 
*^You must pay me $500,'' I make my former 
word of none effect. So here: The promises 
are made by God Who cannot bargain and Who 
cannot lie. Titus 1:2; Heb. 6 : 18 ; I John 2 : 25. 

**How long beneath the law I lay, 
In bondage and distress! 
I toiled the precept to obey, 
But toiled without success. 

Then all my servile works were done, 

A righteousness to raise; 
Now, freely chosen in the Son, 

I freely choose His ways. 

To see the law by Christ fulfilled, 
And hear His pardoning voice, 

^ill change a slave into a child. 
And duty into choice. '* 



THE PLACE AND OFFICE 

OF THE 

LAW 



mmm 



PLACE AND OFFICE OF THE LAW 
GALATiANS III — (Continued,) 

St. Paul closes Ms Seven great arguments 
for justification by faith, with the assertion, 
'^God gave it to Abraham hy promise/' 
*^GoD GAVE it''; there is every difference be- 
tween earning a thing and receiving that thing 
as a gift. One thing and only one thing we 
can earn and claim, for the earning, our wages, 
and that thing is death: *^The wages of sin 
is death.'' The opposite to this is gift — the 
GIFT of God which is eternal life. It is one 
thing to earn, another thing to take. It is one 
thing to inherit a fortune and another thing 
to be the architect of one's own fortune — so 
says St. Paul. Eom. 6:23; Acts 8 : 20 ; II Cor. 
9:15; John 4:10; Eom. 5:18. 

Vs. 18. For if the inheritance he of the law, 
it is no more of promise: hut God gave it to 
Ahraham hy promise. We are saved then, as 
Abraham was, simply and only by hanging sus- 
pended on the naked Word of God. For these 
three things make up salvation; Grace, Prom- 
ise, Faith. Grace brings it, Titus 2 : 11. 
Promise pledges it, Titus 1 : 2. Faith receives 
it, Rom. 10 : 11. The man is thus ^aved at once 
and forever beyond all scope and power of law. 

49 



50 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

If so, there starts at once tlie question put in 
Vs. 19. Wherefore then serveth the law? 
**Wliat is the good of it, Paul? You make void 
the law, you remove, you destroy it ! ' ' 

I do not destroy it, answers St. Paul, simply 
because I deny that it justifies. The law has 
its place although it cannot save or help to save 
any man. Bank notes do not make a man 
righteous, have bank notes therefore no place; 
are they therefore no good? A man cannot eat 
glass, has glass therefore no value; is it no 
good? Even so the law is good in its place, 
^4f a man use it lawfully" — i. e., according to 
its proper design and intention. 

Vs. 19. ^'Wherefore then serveth the law? 
It was added because of transgressions : i. e., it 
serves two great purposes, one social, the other 
spiritual. 

1. Social. The laws of God and man re- 
strain sin and sinners. What the world would 
be without law, who can imagine? Law re- 
strains. The penalty of the gallows holds men 
back from murder; the fear of hell stays the 
hand of the suicide. Eom. 13 : 3, 4 ; I Pet. 2 : 13, 
14; Eccl. 8:5. 

2. Spiritual. The law serves the necessary 
purpose of showing what sin is, and the impos- 
sibility of fallen man's obedience. It was 
added (charin), for the sake of transgressions 
— i. e., in order to bring sin to light and con- 



PLACE AND OFFICE OF THE LAW 51 

dignly condemn it. And this second purpose 
of the law is far more important, for fallen man 
is determined to justify himself and prove to 
God his merits: and, if he does not break the 
laws of the State or of society, he claims that 
he is innocent not only, but praiseworthy. So 
that the more moral he is, the more self right- 
eous he is ; the more painstaking he is, the more 
self willed and obstinate he is ; the better he is 
in his own sight and that of his neighbors', the 
worse he is and the more abominable in the 
sight of God; the harder he works for salva- 
tion, the more surely he damns himself. The 
law then comes in like a hammer and knocks 
this snake on the head. He is a very smooth 
and straight and decent and well behaved and 
respectable snake. He does not wriggle and he 
does not bite — all the same he is the more ven- 
omous. He grows apace. He lifts himself on 
his tail. He is a cobra. 

The law smites the doer of the law for right- 
eousness whether it be doing in whole or in 
part; whether it be trusting in Christ and fill- 
ing out something by merit, or whether it be 
fiilling out merit without Christ at all. Luther 
puts it with tremendous emphasis when he says : 
''If any man be not a murderer, an adulterer, 
a thief and outwardly refrain from sin, as the 
Pharisee did who is mentioned in the Gospel, 
he will swear that he is righteous and presume 



52 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

on his good worts and merits. Such an one 
God cannot otherwise mollify and humble, that 
he may acknowledge his misery and his damna- 
tion but by the law; for that is the hammer of 
death and the thundering of hell and the light- 
ning of God's wrath to beat to powder obstinate 
and senseless hypocrites." The ugliest thing 
in all the universe is proud and self complacent 
self righteousness. God infinitely hates it and 
even man, when he detects it, abhors it. Job 
15:14; Job 15:16; Job 9:30; Prov. 30:12; 
Prov. 20:9; Prov. 16:5. 

The law was added because of transgressions. 
But for how long? How long must a man be 
under conviction, and suffer the strokes of the 
law and lie slain a dead man? Forever? By 
no means: 

Till the Seed should come to Whom the prom- 
ise was made. The Seed, we are told, in verse 
16, is Christ. When Christ comes ; jvhen He is 
revealed to the soul as the perfect Fulfiller of 
law, the law's work is over. Oh! the joy be- 
yond all joy of angels which then fills and floods 
the emancipated soul. Eom. 5:8-11; Gal. 
4:4, 5. 

*'Now freed from guilt, I walk at large. 
My Saviour's Blood my full discharge. 
Wholly absolved by Christ I am. 
From sin's tremendous curse and blame." 



PLACE AND OFFICE OF THE LAW 53 

Vs. 19, 20. And it was ordained hy angels in 
the hands of a mediator. Now a mediator is 
not of one hut God is one. The Law is stead- 
fast and immutable, given as it was by angels ; 
but it calls for a mediator, one to stand between 
the guilty sinner and his God. There are two 
parties then, one of which parties is God. God 
therefore must appoint the mediator for we 
cannot find one. 

Vs. 21. 75 the law th^en against the promises 
of God? God forbid. Do law and promise mu- 
tually destroy one another? Not at all. The 
law demands obedience: the promise brings 
in Christ's obedience. The law damns the man 
who is not perfect ; the promise points to Christ 
who is perfection in our place and as our sub- 
stitute. The agreement therefore between what 
the law requires and what the promise provides 
is absolute and all-harmonious. The law locks 
the door on the sinner ; Christ unlocks the door 
and sets it wide open. The law kills Lazarus 
and rolls a stone upon him; Christ cries, *^Koll 
away the stone: Lazarus come forth!'' John 
8:36; John 10:9. 

For if there had been a law given which could 
have given life, verily righteousness should 
have been hy the law. If a fallen helpless 
creature could keep any law perfectly, the per- 
fect law of God would be the one to keep. But 
fallen and dead as he is, in trespasses and sins. 



54 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

lie cannot keep it. If he conld keep it in the 
future what becomes of his past? But he can- 
not keep it in the future for the same tempta- 
tions are in the future that were in the past and 
the same depraved fallen nature. Besides 
obedience must be flawless — that of an angel, 
that of Christ Himself: '^for whosoever shall 
keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, 
he is guilty of all.'' James 2: 10; Ps. 119: 96. 

Vs. 22, 23. But the Scripture hath concluded 
all under sin, that the promise hy faith of Jesus 
Christ might he given to them that believe. 
The law like a great scythe has cut us down and 
laid us low. We are by it *^shut up" in the 
prison of Giant Despair and no help for us save 
in the key of promise. 

Vs. 24. Wherefore the law was our School- 
master to bring us unto Christ, First to show 
us our sins and secondly to lead us — as the an- 
cient '^ pedagogue" was wont to lead the little 
children by the hand to a better Instructor — to 
One who will take us in hand for salvation. 
The law can teach and whip but cannot comfort. 
Only Christ can do that. 

Vs. 25. But after that faith is come, we are 
no longer under a schoolmaster, i. e., for disci- 
pline, for penalty. It does not mean for pre- 
cept. It does not mean that the Ten Command- 
ments are abolished. It simply says: You are 
not saved by keeping the commandments, nor 



PLACE AND OFFICE OF THE LAW 55 

are you lost if you fail. It is Christ wlio has 
saved you and you cannot be lost. Now you 
will obey from the instinct of the new nature 
and from gratitude, for these are holiness. 

Vs. 26. For ye are all the children of God 
hy faith in Christ Jesus. This is how a man 
becomes a child of God — not by keeping the 
law, nor by trying to keep it, but by simply be- 
lieving on Christ. 

* * There is life for a look at the Cmeified One, 
There is life at this moment for thee ; 
Then look only look unto Him and be saved, 
Unto Him who was nailed to the tree. 

It is not thy tears of repentance and prayers. 
But the BLOOD that atones for the soul, 

On Him then who shed it, thou mayst at once 
Thy weight of iniquities roll. ' ' 



THE SPIRIT 

OF 

SONSHIP 



THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP 

GALATIANS IV 

Vs. 1, 2. Now I say. That the heir, as long 
as he is a child, differeth nothing from a serv- 
ant, though he be lord of all; hut is under tutors 
and governors. . . . The apostle speaking of 
tlie pedagogue (Ch. 111:24), is led to empha- 
size the condition of the child, or minor who is 
under his tutelage. This child is one day to 
reach his majority and come into his fortune. 
Meanwhile he is under as complete a subjection 
as any slave. He is in bondage to the peda- 
gogue who teaches him his obligations and, 
when he is refractory, lays on him the whip. 
The pedagogue is ^^ armed with penalties, but 
devoid of sympathies. '^ He says: *^Do this; 
do that, or be punished."' 

This pedagogue represents the law and the 
dealing of the law with the soul, in which deal- 
ing, it is called ^^The letter that killeth,'' (II 
Cor. 3:6)— ''the strength of sin," (I Cor. 
15:56), and ^Hhe ministry of death," (II Cor. 
3:7). So far as salvation is concerned, the law 
can do nothing but accuse, terrify, condemn and 
kill. The condition of the child or slave under 
the pedagogue, therefore, was abject. But even 

59 



60 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

so, must lie despair? Yes, of himself and his 
present condition, but not of a future in which 
he shall be freed from the bondage and penal- 
ties of the law and be lifted from the condition 
of a servant to that of a son and heir. ^'The 
elect," says Calvin, ^ though they are the chil- 
dren of God from the womb, yet until by faith 
they come to the possession of freedom, they 
remain like slaves under the law, but from the 
moment they know Christ, they remain no 
longer under this bondage." The fixing of that 
moment is the prerogative of God : the bondage 
must continue. 

Until the time appointed of the Father. The 
time appointed for the coming of Christ into 
the world was just right, as regards the con- 
dition of the Jewish Church and of the world 
at large. The great clock struck the hour. It 
was neither too soon nor too late. It was the 
fulness or ripeness of time. Precisely so with 
the coming of Christ in conversion. It is at 
the time appointed by the Father. It is the 
effect of sovereign grace. Gal. 1 : 15, 16 ; Ezek. 
16: 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14; Isa. 42: 16. 

Vs. 3. ^^Even so we, when we were children, 
were in bondage under the elements of the 
world/' We were governed and controlled by 
the world which lieth in wickedness and of 
which we were a part. We walked ^^ according 
to the course of this world" — according to its 



THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP 61 

spirit and maxims, *'and were by nature the 
children of wrath even as others." Eph. 2 : 1, 2. 

Vs. 4. But when the fulness of the time was 
come, God sent forth His Son. This is the 
Church's experience. It is the souPs expe- 
rience. God makes the first movement. We do 
not send for Christ, but Grod sends Christ to 
us. Isa. 59:16; 63:5; IJohn 4:10. 

God sent forth His Son. He must have had 
a Son to send or He could not have sent him. 
Christ therefore was in existence and had been 
from eternity. He was Son not because born 
of Mary, but '^because of His eternal relation- 
ship of wondrous divine existence to the 
Father." The word *^Son" expresses same- 
ness of substance, essence and nature. A man's 
son shares his nature and is his equal. So 
Christ shares the Godhead and is equal with the 
Father both in power and glory. John 10 : 30. 

Made of a woman. He does not say ^^Made 
of a Virgin," because the reference here is to 
our broad humanity. He was ex substantia 
matris — *^out of the substance of His mother" 
— as much Mary's child as any child is his 
mother's. 

Made under the law, to redeem them that 
were under the law. He did not need Himself 
to be under the law, for He was already holy, 
harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners; 
but for 33 years, the life of a generation — a full 



62 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

human life — He was made tinder it, to fulM it, 
not for Himself but for us. *^From tlie begin- 
ning of His incarnation to the end of His life 
upon earth" He was making for us a perfect 
record — a record which will stand opposite our 
names at the judgment as the reason why we 
should enter heaven. God has said: **If thou 
wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." 
We cannot keep them. Christ therefore has 
kept them for us and they now appear as Jcept 
hy us because kept hy him, our Substitute 

''That perfect Man, Who came, the Eternal Son, 
To earn salvation for the sons of men. ' ' 

By His blood He cancels the law's penalty; 
by His obedience He brings in the law's fulfil- 
ment. He thus becomes '^the end of the law," 
i. e., its abolition for justification, ''to every 
one that believeth. ' ' Rom. 5 ; 19 ; II Cor. 5:21; 
Rom. 10:4; Acts 13:39. 

That we mAght receive the adoption of sons. 
If Christ is our Substitute and takes our place, 
then, by blessed transfer and exchange, we for- 
ever take His place and are no longer seen in 
ourselves but in Him — sons in the Eternal Son. 

"By nature and by practice far^ — 
How very far! — from God; 
Yet now by grace brought nigh to Him 
Through faith in Jesus' blood. 



THE SPIEIT OF SONSHIP 63 

So nigh, so very nigh, to God, 

Nearer, I cannot be ; 
For in the Person of His Son 

I am as near as He." 

Any one can adopt children, but an adopted 
child is not one's own child. The word adop- 
tion in the Greek is huiothesian, ^^son-placing" 
or ^^Son making" — i. e., by the actual imparta- 
tion of a Divine life. 

^^Oh, what a vast thing," says one, ^'wbat a 
snblime thing, to be born of God! God could 
have made anything more easily than to beget 
children. He could make stars, worlds, uni- 
verses — ^but to make something, which was not 
His, His own; that was the problem solved in 
giving us life in Christ — ^sonship in the Eter- 
nal Son." 

Vs. 6. And because ye are sons, God hath 
sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your 
hearts, crying, Abba, Father, Your relation to 
God is no longer servile but filial. It is no 
longer that of a miserable sinner crying for 
mercy; it is that of one who *^has now obtained 
mercy," (I Pet. 2:10). It is that of one who 
has boldness of access with confidence — of one 
who draws near in full assurance of faith. 
Eom. 8 : 15. 

^^And because ye are sons/' The doctrine 
of Universal Fatherhood which is so popular 
at present, is a downright lie. God is not the 



64 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

Father of fallen and condemned creatures who 
are under His curse. God is not the Father of 
wicked men and devils; nor can any one who 
is in hell look up and call Him *' Father." 
God is the Father only of His spiritual chil- 
dren and **we are all the children of God hy 
faith in Christ Jesus/' and in no other way. 
The Christian is an actual child of God because 
he has been '^begotten of God" — ^because he 
has a new nature — a ^^ divine nature"; a nature 
which owns God as its source and responds to 
Him as its Father. John 1:12, 13 ; James 
1:18; I John 5:18; I John 3:12: John 8:38. 
God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son 
into your hearts, crying Abba, Father. No- 
tice : It is not we who cry, it is the Spirit who 
cries. It is a cry — a sharp, piercing and sur- 
mounting, overcoming cry; a cry which stops 
all other cries in heaven, earth or hell that are 
against us. There are without us and within 
us many and terrible cries. The law cries; 
the devil cries; conscience cries; our record 
cries ; death cries. Now among these dreadful 
and intolerable cries, another cry goes up — a 
cry from the profounds within us. It is not 
our own cry. We cannot even hear the cry 
though there may be, at times, the stirring of 
a consciousness of it. St. Paul says, **It is a 
groaning that cannot be uttered," — (Eom. 
8 : 26) — a groaning that we cannot groan — a 



THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP 65 

sighing that we cannot cry. It is a looking 
unto God in Christ in spite of all. The Spirit 
helpeth onr infirmities. The Spirit strength- 
ens "Qs, in spite of all, to pant, to breathe, to 
whisper those simplest and most elemental of 
all syllables Ah-ha, Father, and we say, 

* ^ In us, for us intercede, 
And with voiceless groaning plead 
Our unutterable need, 
Comforter Divine ! 
In us, Abba, Father cry, 
Earnest of our bliss on high 
Seal of immortality. 
Comforter Divine." 

In all onr soul conflicts we are to utterly ig- 
nore the law and banish it out of our sight, and 
look to Christ only. We are to refuse to think 
of anything or know anything at all but Christ 
alone and only. To say this is easy, but in the 
time of temptation, when Satan brings up one's 
record and the law accuses him and conscience 
condemns him, and he has death before him — 
then, to ignore all these and trust in Christ 
alone and fly for hiding to His wounds alone, 
is not so easy. It is the triumph of faith, in 
densest darkness to see nothing, hear nothing, 
trust nothing but Jesus only. Here the Spirit 
helps us, still within us crying **Abba" — 
*^ Father." Isa. 50:10. 



66 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

Vs. 8, 9. Howheit then, when ye knew not 
God, ye did service unto them which by nature 
are no gods. But now after that ye have 
known God, or rather are known of God, how 
turn ye again to the weak and beggarly ele- 
ments whereunto ye desire again to be in bond- 
age? As idolaters, they had been addicted to 
images and ceremonies. Now they wish to go 
back, in principle, to these things. When the 
heart grows cold, it calls for a picture, a help 
— for music, for decorations, for ceremonies 
and for vestments. The more nearly frozen a 
man is the more clothes he requires; so here 
the Galatians; they will dress up a corpse. 

Vs. 10, 11. Ye observe days, and months, 
and times, and years. I am afraid of you. 
Eitualism is a menace. They were on the down 
grade. 

Vs. 12. Brethren, I beseech you be as I am; 
ye have not injured me at all. What you have 
injured is the Gospel which you have perverted 
and thrown away. 

Vs. 15. Where is then the blessedness ye 
spake off It is gone. The joy of God's sal- 
vation has departed. First love is lost; the 
Shekinah has vanished from the ^' Holiest, *' 
and your religion has become a dry and heart- 
less mechanical routine. 

** Where is the blessedness I knew, 
When first I saw the Lord? 



THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP 67 

Where is the soul-refreshing view 
Of Jesus and His word? 



What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, 
How sweet their memory still! 

But they have left an aching void, 
The world can never fill.'' 



SAEAH AND HAGAR 

OR THE 

TWO COVENANTS 



SAEAH AND HAGAR 

GAiATiANS rv — (Continued,) 
Saeah and Hagab or the Two Covenants 

The apostle having established the doctrine 
of Justification by Faith; and having shown 
the place and office of the law in shutting men 
up to that justification, that thus escaping from 
a cruel and a fruitless bondage, they may come 
to the freedom of sonship; now proceeds to 
deeper teaching still in bringing in the Doc- 
trine of the Covenants. 

This Doctrine lies at the very heart of the 
Gospel and is so important that he who grasps 
and understands it, is a master in divinity, 
while he who does not properly distinguish 
here remains in doubt and in perplexity and 
walks in darkness knowing not at what he 
stumbles. One of the most difficult things in 
the world is to see the difference between Law 
and Grace — between my doing for salvation and 
the doing of Another in my place, for my sal- 
vation: and even the clearest sighted and the 
most experienced believer finds in himself a 
tendency to fall back from this contrast; to be- 
come clouded again and to confound together 
things which are as opposite as black and 

71 



72 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

white — death and life — curse and blessing — 
midnight and noontide. 

God deals with man only by Covenant. 
What is a covenant I It is a promise made 
upon conditions to be fulfilled. This being so, 
it is clear that there can be but two and only 
two covenants possible between God and man — 
a covenant founded upon what man shall do 
for salvation ; and a covenant founded on what 
God shall do for him, to save him; in other 
words, A Covenant of Works and one of Grace. 
Eom. 9:4; Eph. 2 : 12. The Scripture plainly 
teaches these two covenants, and 

I. The CovEiTANT of Woeks 

The Covenant of Works was an agreement 
between God and Adam, including Adam's 
whole posterity, in which God promised him 
and them eternal life and happiness, on condi- 
tion that he should perfectly keep God's com- 
mandments, with the alternative of death if he 
should break them. In other words, the Cove- 
nant said, '^Do this and thou shalt live; if not, 
then dying thou shalt die. ' ' Matt. 19 : 1 7 ; Luke 
10; 28. 

II. The Covenant of Geace 

The Covenant of Grace was an agreement 
made between God the Father and God the Son 



SAEAH AND HAGAB 73 

from all eternity: in which, in foresight of the 
fall of man, God the Father said: My Son if 
Thon wilt pour ont Thy sonl as an offering for 
sin and sinners, I will give to Thee a seed 
among them — a multitude which no man can 
number. Isa. 53 : 10 ; Heb. 8 : 6. 

The Covenant of Works stood between God 
and Adam and Adam fell and it now lies hope- 
lessly broken. The Covenant of Grace stood 
between God and Christ and Christ has ful- 
filled it and it stands established forever. The 
Covenant of Works said: '^Do man or die." 
The Covenant of Grace says : ' * Christ has done 
it for thee, man, that thou mayst never die." 
That the apostle, in this chapter speaks of these 
two covenants appears: 

1. From the two Principles — Bondage and 

Freedom. 

2. From the two Sons — Ishmael and Isaac. 

3. From the two Mothers — Hagar and 

Sarah. 

4. From the two Mountains — Sinai and Sion. 

5. From the asserted Fact of the Covenants. 

1. Feom the Two Pkinciples — Bondage and 
Fkeedom 

Vs. 21. '^Tell me ye that desire to he under 
the law, do ye not hear the lawf^' This is in 
reality an appeal to all that he has said before. 
He is again making the same contrast and dis- 



74 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

tinction. *^Tell me, Do ye not hear the law? 
What does it speak to you?" Bondage. 
**Wliat is the contrast to this?'' Freedom 
from bondage. '^How?'' By One who breaks 
your chain. Do you not see that the law is 
exaction^ and only exaction, and that you can- 
not meet the exaction and therefore must be 
saved in some other way? Rom. 3:19, 20. 

2. From the Two Sons — Ishmael, Isaac 

Vs. 22. For it is written, that Abraham had 
two sons, the one hy a bondmaid, the other by 
a free woman. Of course, the son of a bond 
woman was born in bondage. That was his 
natural condition, nor could he, by any effort 
of his own make it anything else. Never would 
it be true that he was legitimate. Let him do 
what he would, there would be on him a stain. 
Ishmael was born of the ^^ flesh,'' i. e., in a nat- 
ural way. There was nothing supernatural 
about his birth. God had not promised him. 
Abraham's unbelief and Sarah's precipitancy 
were his origin. In contrast to this is the son 
of the free woman; born of the Spirit; born 
supernaturally ; born in fulfilment of a definite 
promise. There was nothing of nature about 
Isaac, for nature in Abraham was dead, and 
Sarah barren. Isaac therefore was a miracle 
— a child of grace. Here is the contrast of 



SARAH AND HAGAR 75 

the ** flesh'' and ^^ spirit"; and these two ele- 
ments contend with one another as we read be- 
low in verse 29. ^^He that was born after the 
flesh persecuted him that was born after the 
Spirit." The two things were not only in con- 
trast but in bitter antagonism and feud. It 
was a perpetual quarrel between them — ^the boy 
under the law could not endure the child of 
free grace. It was a fight to the death of one 
or the other, and so finally the sentence came, 
'*Cast out the bond-woman and her son for the 
son of the hond-woman shall not be heir with 
the son of the free woman,' ^ 

3. From the Two Mothers — ^Hagar, Sarah 

Vs. 23. But he who was of the hond-woman 
was horn after the flesh; hut he of the free 
woman was hy promise. While Hagar had the 
first son, Sarah was married and Isaac had been 
promised before Hagar ever was heard of. 
Sarah was with Abraham in Ur of Chaldees; 
Hagar had but recently been brought up out 
of Egypt. Sarah was the true wife; Hagar 
was not; she should never have been anything 
but an handmaid to Sarah. Kept in her place, 
she was well. Keep the law in its place — ^let 
it keep pointing a way to Christ, ^'as the eyes 
of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress" and 
all will be well. But when Hagar points to 



76 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

herself and prides herself on her achievements 
and despises free grace in the person of Sarah, 
she is only to be banished and put an end to. 
Again Hagar never was a free woman ; she was 
always nnder the law, but Sarah was never un- 
der law ; she was always at liberty and at home 
with her husband. Isaac was not under the 
law as Ishmael was ; he was the heir and lord 
of all. Even so, ^'We are not nnder law but 
nnder grace." Rom. 6:14; Gal. 2:19; Rom. 
7:2, 4; Gal. 5:18; Rom. 7:6. The law is nn- 
der ns as Hagar was nnder Sarah. The law 
is no longer above ns to threaten — ^bnt nnder ns 
to serve. I Cor. 9 : 21 ; Rom. 3 : 31. Once 
more: Hagar was cast out, but Sarah never 
was. The Covenant of Works is gone; it is 
banished — Hagar is dead in the wilderness. 
But Sarah remains in the tent to the end, and 
she lies to-day side by side with her husband 
in the cave of Machpelah. The free wife is a 
wife forever. The Covenant she represents 
will never be annulled. 

4. From the Two Mountains — Sinai and Sion 

Vs. 24. Which things are an allegory. St. 
Paul did not invent this allegory. It was not a 
figment of his imagination. He found it in 
Genesis. It was revealed to him at Sinai. 
We should never have known that God in the 
history had prefigured a mystery, if the apostle 



. SAEAH AND HAGAR 77 

had not told ns so. He, in the solitudes of 
Arahia where Hagar went away to die, was 
able to see the contrast between Sinai (the 
Mount of thorns), bondage under the law, and 
Mt. Sion which is free and ^'from above," the 
city of the living God into which, by faith, we 
enter. Two mountains! One, the law, which 
smokes and flashes lire; the other, sun lighted 
Sion, the Church of promise — the Church in- 
visible and heavenly composed of all believers. 

5. From the Fact of Two Coveitants 

Vs. 24-26. For these are the two covenants: 
the one from Mount Sinai which gendereth to 
bondage which is Agar. For this Agar is 
Mount Sinai in Arahia and answereth to Je- 
rusalem which now is and is in bondage with 
her children. But Jerusalem which is above is 
free, which is the mother of us all. St. Paul 
says : These are the Two Covenants ; there are, 
there can be only two, one based on our doing ; 
the other on a free, unconditional promise. 
One which says: *'Do and I will save you!" 
The other which says: Believe on Christ Who 
has done it, and you are saved. The covenant 
made with Adam and broken by him, is men- 
tioned in Hosea 6:7. *^They have broken as 
Adam" (k'Adam, see margin), ^Hhe covenant." 
The Covenant of Grace is described in Ps. 
89:3,4;Ps. 89:19, 27, 28. 



78 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

''With David's Lord and ours, 
A covenant once v^as made, 
Whose bonds are firm and sure, 
Whose glories ne'er shall fade; 
Signed by the sacred Three in One 
In mutual love ere time begun. 

Firm as the lasting hills 

This covenant shall endure, 
Whose potent shalls and wills 

Make every blessing sure; 
When ruin shakes all nature's frame 

Its jots and tittles stand the same." 

Vs. 27. For it is ivritten, Rejoice thou bar- 
ren that hearest not; hreaJc forth and cry, thou 
that travailest not; for the desolate hath many 
more children than she which hath an husband. 
The apostle here states the paradox which has 
been a surprise in every age of the world: the 
man of freewill boasts the merit of works but 
does not produce them; the man of free grace 
denies the merit of works, but his preaching 
is everywhere followed by a seriousness and 
punctilio which men call ''Puritanic." The 
doctrine which the world considers so barren 
brings forth children to God. The grieved and 
discarded and desolate Sarah hath many more 
children than she who is married to the law, 
that ' ' dead husband. ' ' Eom. 7:5; James 1 : 15. 

Vs. 28. Notv we brethren, as Isaac was, are 



SAEAH AND HAGAE 79 

the children of promise. That is, we have con- 
sented to be saved on the ground of God's sim- 
ple promise, all conditions having been fulfilled 
for US by Christ. It is not that we merit any- 
thing, or ever can merit, but that God has 
promised us eternal life if we trust in Jesus; 
that and that only is the ground of our hope. 
We are saved by promise: for the ^^ climax of 
all virtue'' is to trust the naked word of God. 

Vs. 29. But as then he that was horn after 
the flesh persecuted him that was horn of the 
Spirit, even so is it now. Self righteousness is 
proud and arrogant. The man who is pluming 
himself on doing his duty sets himself up as a 
standard of other men's duty. Duty is self- 
righteous and duty is cruel — as one has truly 
said: ^^The most horrible deeds the world has 
ever known have been done by those whose ex- 
cuse was * their duty.' " So parents have de- 
prived their children of all childhood's rights 
and pleasures — so inquisitors like Torquemada 
have tortured helpless innocence — so Saul of 
Tarsus verily thought that in slaughtering the 
saints he was doing God service. Acts 26:9. 
The religion of efforts, duty, works and striv- 
ings, hates, while at the same time it envies, the 
religion of the man who rests satisfied and 
quiet in the promise of God's Word. 

Vs. 30. Nevertheless ivhat saith the Scrip- 
ture^ Cast out the bond woman and her son: 



80 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

for the son of the bond woman shall not he heir 
with the son of the free woman. He who trusts 
to be saved by his merits, or partly by Christ 
and partly by his merits, will find himself cast 
out. On the other hand there is no falling from 
grace. ^^The Holy Ghost will not leave His 
living temple to become a habitation of devils'' 
nor will Christ lose one of the sheep which have 
been given to Him by the Father. John 
10:27-30. Another golden text is Jer. 32:40: 
^^I will not turn away from them and they shall 
not depart from Me." I will not — they shall 
not. No such promise was ever in the Cove- 
nant of Works — God never said of Adam, even 
of innocent Adam, *^He shall not depart from 
Me." It is only the Covenant of Grace which 
says : ^^The mountains shall depart and the hills 
be removed : but my kindness shall not depart 
from thee, neither shall the Covenaitt of My 
Peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath 
mercy on thee." ^^I will never leave thee nor 
forsake." Isa. 54:10; Heb. 13:5. 

''The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose 
I will not, I will not desert to its foes. 
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, 
I'll never, no never, no never forsake/' 

Vs. 31. So then brethren^ we are not children 
of the bond woman hut of the free. The apos- 
tle boldly asserts it. We are, not we may be, 



SAEAH AND HAGAE 81 

not we hope to be, but we aee the children of 
the free. The apostle stands in full assurance. 
We who believe ought also to stand in full as- 
surance. As Luther says: ^^Let every one so 
practice with himself that his conscience may 
be fully assured that he is under grace. And 
if he feel any doubt or wavering let him wrestle 
against it, for it behooveth us to overcome all 
doubting and to stand in the persuasion and 
certainty of God's favor, rooting out of our 
hearts this cursed opinion that a man ought to 
doubt the record which God has given of His 
Son; ^^And this is the record, that God hath 
given to us eternal life and this life is in His 
Son. IJohn5:ll. 

'' 'Tis he who hath the Son hath life, 
Though dead in sins before. 
And nothing of the wrath of God 
Shall ever reach him more." 

''My God, the Covenant of Thy love 
Abides forever sure; 
And in its matchless grace I feel 
My happiness secure. 

*'Thy Covenant the last accent claims 
Of this poor faltering tongue, 
And shall the earliest notes employ 
Of my celestial song." 

The Covenant of Grace is founded on the sim- 



82 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

pie promise, ** Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
and thou shalt he saved." 'We are to eye this 
promise and act upon it and to know that we 
cannot triast it too ahsolutely nor too far. 
*^The promise of God," says Spurgeon, **is 
our best ground of assuranJ^e: it is far more 
sure than dreams or visions and fancied revela- 
tions ; and is far more to he trusted than feel- 
ings either of joy or sorrow. It is written, He 
that believeth on Him is not condemned. I be- 
lieve on Jesus, therefore I am not condemned. 
This is good reasoning and the conclusion is 
certain." 

And what I trust for in the promise and take 
in the prom^e is my salvation. If I do not 
believe that I sh.2R,])e^aved, I do not believe 
anything worth the believing; my faith is a 
bridge having only one end to it — this end. 
The faith which saves goes all the way across. 
It is not ^^ Christ will keep me if I keep my- 
self," but it is, *^ Christ Will Keep Me.'' 



STEADFASTNESS 
FALLING FEOM GRACE 



STEADFASTNESS— FALLING FROM 
GRACE 



GALATIANS V 



The Epistle to the Galatians, like most of 
St. Paul's epistles, falls into three divisions. 
The first two chapters are introductory; the 
next two doctrinal; the last two hortatory and 
experimental. 

Drawing near to the close of the epistle and 
entering its third division, the apostle becomes 
more vehement in defence of Salvation by Faith 
alone ; and in exhorting the Galatians to main- 
tain the freedom wherewith Christ had made 
them free. 

It is, no doubt, a difficult thing to arrive at 
the fact and simplicity of the Gospel — to come 
to see Christ as our Substitute standing for us 
forever, for everything, from the moment we 
consent to risk ourselves on Him and trust 
Him. But it is no less difficult, to hold fast to 
salvation in Christ when once we possess it. 
In times of soul distress and awful despair, 
when, driven completely out of ourselves and 
made to feel our utter helplessness, we cast 
ourselves on Christ to save us, joy unspeakable 
at once fills the soul. But when distress is 
gone and despair has been removed, and we 

85 



86 GBACE IN GALATIANS 

stand in all the conscions bliss of freedom, then 
Satan comes in again to tempt us and cause us 
to doubt — to seduce and allure, if not to drag 
us away from the solid ground of God's prom- 
ise and down into the bogs and quagmires of 
an evil questioning where reason flounders and 
where faith makes shipwreck. I Pet. 5:8, 9 ; 
I Cor. 15:58; II Pet. 3:17; Heb. 3:6; 10:35. 

The Ground, the only ground of salvation is 
the merit of Christ. That I look at; that I 
trust and nothing besides it, and so long as I 
keep looking and keep trusting, I have peace 
which passes understanding; but that peace, 
the devil and his emissaries — the false apostles 
who abound in every age — will, if possible, by 
every means filch away. How needful then for 
me, as for the Galatians of old, the Apostolic 
injunction, — 

Vs. 1. Stand fast therefore in the liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made us free, ^^ Stand 
fast!" How needful this injunction, the 
apostasies of every age, from Galatia to Rome 
and from Eome to Geneva, unite to emphasize. 
Yea, we ourselves have seen men espouse a 
certain principle and assert it with surprising 
earnestness, only as quickly to renounce the 
same principle and to exhibit the glaring and 
pitiful spectacle of a self contradiction. Gal. 
2:18; Titus 3:10, 11. 

Stand fast! We go not from faith to un- 



STEADFASTNESS 87 

faitli, but from faith to faith. It is a contin- 
ual eyeing of Christ and following hard after 
Christ. ^^ Godliness," says one, ^4s a life-long 
business. It is hard to keep on, but it is 
harder still to heep on keeping on, and the dif- 
ference between the spurious and real Christian 
lies in this staying power." Matt. 13:21; 
Matt. 10 : 22 ; James 1 : 12 ; Heb. 3 : 14. 

Stand fast in the liberty: What liberty? 
Liberty from the wrath of God, the penalty of 
sin, the fear of death, the deviPs power and 
accusations. "We are freed from all these evils 
because Christ, the Son of God, has been set 
between us and them, as our screen and our 
Substitute. His Blood is between us and hell ; 
His Eighteousness is our passport to heaven. 
By the one we have escaped and by the other 
we enter. 

*'0 love! thou bottomless abyss! 

My sins are swallowed up in thee; 
Covered is my unrighteousness, 

From condemnation I am free; 
While Jesu's Blood, through earth and skies 

Mercy, free, boundless mercy cries ! ' ' 

And he not entangled again with the yoJce of 
bondage. *^The reference here," says Luther, 
*4s to oxen which draw in the yoke with great 
toil, receiving nothing thereby but forage and 
pasture, and when they are able to draw the 



88 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

yoke no more they are appointed to slaugh- 
ter." So it is with those who fall back from 
the freedom of Christ and become occupied 
with their own doings. They become entan- 
gled with the yoke of the law — they do not 
know when they have done enough ; they do not 
know whether they have done the right thing; 
after all, what is their doing good for? When 
they have tired themselves out, they have only 
death for the end of it. Those who doubt their 
salvation are always in the fear of death and 
may be called the ^^deviPs martyrs,'^ for they 
work hard for merit and, when they die, merit 
only damnation. Jer. 31 : 18 ; Matt. 23 : 14. 

Vs. 2. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if 
ye he circumcised, Christ shall profit you noth- 
ing. So far St. Paul has spoken as in light- 
ning flashes; now he speaks in thunder bolts. 
*^I, as God's ambassador declare that if ye be 
circumcised Christ shall peofit you nothing." 
This is something tremendous. *^ Christ shall 
profit you NOTHING — you lose Christ and all 
your interest in Christ and His in you, the mo- 
ment when in act or thought you add anything 
to what He has done to save you." If I con- 
tend that circumcision or anything else helps 
toward my justification before God in the way 
of merit, then I have some merit, then I can 
never be left out of heaven because I have some 
merit. Then I do not need Christ any more: 



STEADFASTNESS 89 

He is unprofitable for me; I get into heaven 
without him : I evacuate Christ. The man who 
reasons so becomes first an Arminian, then a 
Unitarian, then a mere moralist or an immor- 
alist; he drops Christ out of his scheme alto- 
gether. 

Vs. 3. For I testify to every man that is 
circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole 
law. There is an anadiplosis, or solemn repe- 
tition here. If you fall back, in any degree, 
from Christ to the law, then you are bound to 
keep the whole law, i. e., to be as holy as Christ 
was. You are thus impaled on the two horns 
of a moral dilemma, — ^you lose Christ, and you 
lose all your merits because they are none of 
them perfect but imperfect — and so, you are 
damned ! Gal. 3 : 10 ; James 2 : 10. 

Vs. 4. Christ is become of none effect unto 
you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, 
ye are fallen from grace. Ye are fallen from 
grace: not out of grace, as if grace were not 
real — as if grace were not permanent — as if 
eternal life could die. It is not such a falling 
as is mentioned in Heb. 6 : 6, where the word is 
parapiptein, to fall outside of a thing and com- 
pletely ^^away"; but here the word is eJcpiptein, 
a falling inside, or a dislocation as of a bone 
which needs to be replaced. Those to whom 
St. Paul speaks in the Hebrews never were in 
grace. They fell from a mere temporary *^en- 



90 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

ligMenment, ' ' not from the things which belong 
to, or ^' accompany '* salvation (Heb. 6:9). 
*^Ye are fallen from grace'' means, yon have 
abandoned your platform: yon have dropped 
upon a lower level : yon have left the high and! 
cloudless and out and out position of justifi- 
cation by the Merits, Blood and Kighteousness 
of Christ alone: your ritualism — your religion 
of ceremonies and the ^ ^ observance of days and 
months and times and years" is a lapse. Ee- 
gain, recover your former position or Christ is 
lost to you; He is of *^none effect"; '^unprofit- 
able"; worthless. The apostle's word is a 
Caveat, a warning, a protest. Had there been 
no recovery for these Galatians — ^had it been 
* impossible," as in the case of the Hebrews, 
'Ho renew them again unto repentance" — the 
apostle would never have written to them at 
all. Jer. 3:22; I Kings 8:46-51; Jer. 4:1; 
Hosea 5 : 15. 

Vs. 5. For we through the Spirit wait for 
the hope of righteousness by faith. We have 
righteousness by faith; then hope founded upon 
that righteousness. Faith is in the understand- 
ing; hope in the affections and will. Faith 
rests in what is done already; hope runs for- 
ward to what will be. Hope then, desires and 
expects. Once we are assured of our interest 
in Christ which is the work of faith, the feel- 
ings of desire and expectation are awakened 



STEADFASTNESS 91 

and these have their ground and firm founda- 
tion in righteousness, and 

1. In the righteousness of God who saves 
us by justice as well as by mercy: for if Christ's 
obedience and sacrifice are accepted in my be- 
half, God cannot punish me, He cannot demand 
satisfaction 

''First at my Bleeding Surety's hand 
And then again, at mine/' 

2. In the righteousness of Christ who has 
obeyed the law for me. ''Our hope of right- 
eousness," says one, "is a hope arising out of 
the fact that we are righteous before God and 
therefore that God will treat us as being so. 
Strange hope, since we are guilty! Yes, but 
we stand not in our own, nor in the righteous- 
ness of any other man, but only in the doings 
and the dying of our Lord Jesus Christ which 
together make up for us a 'wedding dress' — a 
'robe of righteousness' more glorious than hu- 
man merit could have spun even if unfallen 
Adam had been the spinner." 

With His spotless vesture on 
I'm holy in the Holy One. 

Eom. 5:19; II Cor. 5:21. 

We are waiting. Would it not have been 

better to say, we are working. No, it would 

have spoiled the sense altogether. To com- 



92 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

plete our hope of rigMeonsness by faith, we 
have nothing to do except wait — to make our 
crown more secure we have to do nothing. 
Has not Jesus said, *^It is finished"? So far 
as justification is concerned, we are as right- 
eous now as we shall be when robed in light, 
we cast our crowns before the throne. We are 
now at rest ; we wait. It is true we are work- 
ing for other reasons, but not to be saved ; and 
we rest and wait while we work. Were it not 
for witness bearing we might be taken to heaven 
this moment — we are as fit as we shall ever be 
— as meet as we shall ever be, for '^He hath 
made us meet." Col. 1:12. 

We ivait for the hope. We hope, and hope 
fluctuates. Here again comes the devil and 
strives to dislodge me and cloud me and shut 
away Christ's righteousness, my merit, by 
eclipse of faith ; but hope springs up, a phoenix 
from the smoking flax, and soars away and 
clutches with her talons and lays hold upon 
eternal life and will not let it go. Heb. 6 : 18, 19. 

*'My hope is built on nothing less 

Than Jesu's Blood and Righteousness 
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, 
But wholly lean on Jesu's name. 
On Christ the solid rock I stand, 
All other ground is sinking sand." 



A WOEKING FAITH 



A WOEKINa FAITH 
GAiATiANS V — (Continued.) 

The pre-eminent point and centre of his 
whole teaching to which St. Paul continually 
returns and with new emphasis, is Justifica- 
tion by the Kighteousness of Christ alone, re- 
ceived and rested in by faith. Faith, according 
to the apostle, is a naked empty hand which 
simply takes salvation with all that salvation 
means, as a free gift in Christ. The moment 
then when a sinner acts faith, having nothing 
in his eye but Christ's righteousness only, he 
passes from death unto life : that is, the moment 
he consents to be saved by Christ's merits 
alone outside of himself and irrespective of 
any qualifications, he is a saved man, whereas 
the moment before he was not. And he is 
saved as a sinner, as ungodly, without any qual- 
ifications ; for, while Christ is well qualified for 
us, no sinner before he believes has any quali- 
fication for Christ except the sin in which he is 
perishing. Eom. 4:5; Matt. 9 : 13 ; Ezek. 
86 : 32 ; Zech. 3 : 1-4. So then nothing can help 
us in the affair of salvation but faith. 

Vs. 6. For in Jesus Christ neither circum- 
cision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; 
l)ut faith which worketh hy love. The outward 

95 



96 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

whether ceremonial or simple — ^whether ritual 
or mortal — whether profession or conduct, 
helps one not a jot. Sacraments alone are 
empty symbols — a thousand baptisms, ten thou- 
sand communions leave the man the same old 
Adam, the *^ natural' ' which cannot receive nor 
apprehend the spiritual. There must be the 
new creature; that which is fed from Christ 
must be in Christ, as the branch in the vine. 
There must be the thing born of God, and '^who 
is he that is born of God but he that believeth 
that Jesus is the Christ''? John 15: 5, 6; I 
John 5 : 1. Faith then makes the difference. 
Faith is the great necessity. Faith is the in- 
strument which saves. Luke 7 : 50 ; Gal. 6 : 15 ; 
Luke 18:11-13; Eph. 2:8; II Cor. 5:17. 

But faith which worketh hy love. We are 
justified by faith alone but not by faith which 
is alone. It is not a dead principle: a seed 
dropped into the heart, it generates and pushes 
into light and shoots the blade and sprouts. 
Faith is a dynamo within the soul — a new and 
supernatural, infused and living power which 
cannot slumber or be idle, but must work. A 
locomotive which stands still, which carries 
neither fire nor steam inside, is nothing better 
than a pile of old iron — a rubbish heap. The 
locomotive which fulfils the function of a loco- 
motive, works. It draws the cars and yet the 
cars are not the locomotive, and men do not 



A WOEKING FAITH 97 

push the carSy without, or with the locomotive 
for the locomotive is the only power. The 
business then, in running the train is to feed 
the locomotive and to keep the hand upon the 
throttle of the locomotive. Faith is the loco- 
motive and, for motion, everything depends on 
faith; not one half mile and not one rod and 
not one foot and not one inch and not one 
hair's breadth without it. Eom. 1:16, 17; 
Luke 17:5; Col. 2:6, 7; I John 5:4; Jude 20; 
Heb. 10 : 23 ; II Tim. 4 : 7. Faith works by love. 
To trust the Lamb of God and not to love him 
is a sheer impossibility. Born of the vision of 
a Bleeding Christ, is an adoring love. Faith 
quickens love as sunshine breeds the flowers. 
You cannot have the bulb of faith without the 
hyacinth of love. 

Vs. 7. Ye did run well; who did hinder you 
that ye should not obey the truth? The loco- 
motive carried you along and you were making 
noble progress. The Christian life is here 
likened to a track. The Galatians were run- 
ning well while they remained sound in the 
doctrine, steadfast and unmoved. This seems 
a paradox — *^ stand fast for when you stand, 
you run." Movement is not always progress. 
In the case of the Galatians movement was 
retrogression. On the other hand, we may be 
running when our lives seem to ourselves to be 
but a snail's pace, — a slow creeping. ^'They 



98 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

that wait on the Lord shall mount up with 
wings as eagles.'' They wait and seem to do 
nothing. Yet they are steadily rising toward 
heaven. They are like trees planted by the 
rivers of water. They remain where they were 
but they bring forth their fruit in its season. 
Thus it is possible to ^^ stand fast^' and yet to 
be ''running^' in the sight of God. Isa. 40 : 31 ; 
Ps. 1:3; Ps. 92:12-15. 

Who did hinder you that ye should not obey 
the truths Who came in a stranger to destroy 
your peace and to ruin your paradise, as the 
serpent came into the garden to interrupt the 
happiness of our first parents and turn poor 
Eve — who gave a flattering fiend the confidence 
she would not give her God — into a beggared 
outcast. John 10 : 5 ; II Cor. 11 : 3. 

Vs. 8. This persuasion cometh not of Him 
that calleth you. However soft and sweet and 
musical the voice, it is the hum and hiss and 
whisper of the lurking serpent. Beware of the 
doctrine of works for justification in any pos- 
sible form. Beware of taking Christ in any 
other way than these two: First, as the Gift 
of Salvation, and Secondly, as an example to 
show us our defects — a mirror of what we 
ought to be and are not. Looking into the 
mirror drives us back of it to Christ Himself, 
our Sacrifice and our Perfection. His right- 
eousness alone, not ours, we see in the glass 



A WORKING FAITH 99 

of the Word and on it our fixed gaze is sus- 
pended. 

Vs. 9. A little leaven leaveneth the tvhole 
lump. Leaven in the Scripture, without a sin- 
gle exception, means corruption. A little 
leaven hidden by the false woman in three meas- 
ures of pure Gospel meal destroys them (Matt. 
13: 33). So we are told to ^ Spurge out the old 
leaven'' — bad, unsound doctrine, fermentation 
and rottenness at the centre is leaven. So in 
the Lord's Supper we are to keep the feast, 
*^not with the old leaven, neither with the 
leaven of malice and of wickedness; but with 
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 
Sincerity and cleaving to the Gospel doctrine 
are the tests of the unleavened condition. 
Exod. 13:7; Amos 4:4, 5; Matt. 16:6, 12; I 
Cor. 5:6-8. 

Vs. 10. I have confidence in you through the 
Lord that ye will he none otherwise minded: 
hut he that trouhleth you shall bear his judg- 
ment whosoever he he. St. Paul believes that 
the root of the matter is, after all, in these 
Galatians and that they will be restored, not 
by any self recovery but ^^ through the Lord." 
He has confidence that He who has begun a 
good work within them will carry it on unto 
the day of the Lord Jesus (Phil. 1:6), and that, 
in spite of all their arts and wiles and sophis- 
tries and machinations, the false teachers who 



100 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

have led them astray will be unmasked and 
punished. Where there is real grace, it can 
neither be overcome by assaults nor seduction. 
Hosea 14:4; Matt. 24:24; Luke 22:32; I Pet. 
1:5; Jer. 3 : 12, 13. 

Vs. 11. And I, brethren, if I yet preach cir- 
cumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution^ 
I do suffer persecution, therefore it is per- 
fectly clear that I oppose circumcision or any- 
thing else pertaining to law in the matter of 
justification. My doctrine and that of your se- 
ducers will no more agree than fire and water, 
vinegar with nitre. But should we agree, 

Then is the offense of the cross ceased. For 
the cross is the precise opposite and denial of 
all human ethics and merit. Let me cease to 
preach the cross and I no longer oppose human 
merit. Then I am popular, I suffer no persecu- 
tion for I allow men to believe that if they do 
the best they can, God will save them irre- 
spective of the righteousness of Christ. The 
cross denies this and cuts up by the roots every 
doctrine of works and every human opinion, and 
eaves us Christ only. I Cor. 2:2; Gal. 6 : 13, 14. 

** Works of man when made his plea, 
Never shall accepted be ; 
Fruits of pride (vain- glorious worm!) 
Are the best he can perform. 



A WORKING FAITH 101 

Banish every vain pretence 

Based on human excellence; 
Perish everything in man, 

But the grace that never can." 



LIBERTY AND LAW 



LIBERTY AND LAW 

GAiiATiANS V — ( Cofitifiu ed. ) 

Vs. 13. For, brethren, ye have teen called 
unto liberty: only use not liberty for an occa- 
sion to the flesh. The apostle here emphasizes 
a danger. The believer, before believing, re- 
lied upon his works to save him. After be- 
lieving, seeing he is in no way saved by his 
works, he is in danger of despising good works 
and minifying their value. At first he was an 
Arminian, living by law; now he is in danger 
of becoming an Antinomian and flinging away 
the law altogether. 

But the law is holy and the commandment 
holy and just and good. It is God's standard 
— the eternal Norm. Fulfilled by Christ for 
us, it still remains the swerveless and unerring 
rule of righteousness. We are without the law 
for salvation but not without the law for obe- 
dience. Even Christ Himself, made under the 
law in His human nature, is still — in that hu- 
man nature which is a creature, the first sub- 
ject of the heavenly kingdom and so forever 
under the law. (I Cor. 15:28.) Angels are 
under the law, ** doing God's commandments, 
hearkening unto the voice of His word." 

105 



106 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

(Ps. 103: 20.) The law then is immutable— its 
reign universal and without exception. The 
Law! It is the transcript of the Divine per- 
fections: the standard of eternal justice: the 
joy and rapture of all holy beings. The Law! 
We are above it for salvation, but nnder it or 
rather in it and it in ns, ennomos, as a principle 
of holiness. I Cor. 9:21. (See the Greek.) 
Suppose a straight rail track from Denver to 
New York and suppose there is no other way. 
A man living in Denver proposes to walk that 
track but he is sick, an invalid, and after a mile 
or two he sinks down. He rises with great dif- 
jBculty and sets out again, the sooner to break 
down. Oh, but he has a strong will — ^what he 
calls a *^free will." He can walk it, if he will, 
and walk it he will. After repeated and ex- 
haustive effort, he gives up, convinced at last 
that he is helpless, and sinks down beside the 
track and lies there like a dead man. In that 
condition, an express train comes along. The 
sharp eye of the engine driver discovers the 
man. The train is halted and the man lifted 
aboard. Now what? The man can never get 
to New York by walking the track, but is the 
track torn up and destroyed because he cannot 
walk it? Not at all. The track remains more 
needful and more important than ever and the 
locomotive that carries the man must run on 
that track and cannot shunt to one side or the 



LIBERTY AND LAW 107 

other. The track runs straight through, only 
the man is not trying to walk it any more. He 
is being moved and carried by a new principle : 
the principle which says: ^^A new heart also 
will I give you, and a new spirit will I put 
within you'' — ^^and cause you to walk in My 
statutes and ye shall keep My judgments and 
do them." Ezek. 36: 26, 27. ^^For this is the 
covenant that I will make, saith the Lord; I 
will put My laws into their mind and write them 
in their hearts and I will be to them a God and 
they shall be to Me a people." (Heb. 8: 10.) 
The law then, as a rule, a standard, a principle 
of life is fully binding upon all believers. They 
are not saved by it, and they are not punished 
if through weakness of the flesh they fail and 
break it, but they are bound to it as is the loco- 
motive to the unswerving track and, rejoicing 
at each mile of progress heavenward — at each 
station passed by growth in grace, they can ex- 
ulting cry, '*0 how love I Thy law! it is my 
meditation all the day. I delight to do Thy 
will, my God! I will run the way of Thy 
commandments, when Thou shalt enlarge my 
heart." Ps. 119:97; Ps. 40:8; Ps. 119:32. 
*'Do we then make void the law through faith?" 
Do we remove the binding metals of the 
Ten Commandments? God forbid, yea we 
strengthen the track — *'we establish the law." 
Rom. 3:3L 



108 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

Only use not liberty for an occasion to the 
■flesh. In these words we have a new proof that 
the doctrine which we preach is the true one. 
There were those in St. PanPs day who ob- 
jected: ^'If the law is fulfilled and we saved 
already, we may go on to sin because grace 
abounds!'' *^Do you reason in that way?'' 
says the apostle, ^Hhen your damnation is 
just" (Eom. 3:8). There is no gratitude in 
you and no virtue or life principle — you ^*turn 
the grace of God into lasciviousness." (Jude 
4.) Spurgeon once put it to such an objector: 
'^Man, you talk like that because you are not 
born again." It is indeed a ^^beast-like argu- 
ment," that because God is good, I may act 
like a devil — that because He saves me at in- 
finite cost to Himself I may feel I owe Him 
nothing — that chosen from all eternity in Jesus 
Christ to be holy, I should live as if going to 
hell — that being born again I should show no 
spiritual breeding — ^no Noblesse oblige. The 
very statement of such propositions is appall- 
ing and only goes to emphasize what depths of 
depravity are in the unchanged heart of fallen 
man. This same apostle in another place gives 
the antidote when he says: **We thus judge, 
that if One died for all, then were all dead : and 
that He died for all, that they which live should 
not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto 
Him Who died for them and rose again." 



LIBEETY AND LAW 109 

But hy love serve one another. Here tlie law 
is brought in as a service. ^ ^ I am among you, ' ' 
said Jesus, as one that serveth — ^4f ye love Me 
keep my commandments J' The New Testa- 
ment repeats and enforces all the Ten Com- 
mandments. They were given to be kept and 
kept they shall be. Matt. 5 : 19. 

Vs. 14. For all the law is fulfilled in one 
word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself. **The law is fulfilled:" the law 
was given to be fulfilled not only for us, but in 
us who walk not after the flesh but after the 
Spirit. There is danger here of a mistake on 
either side — for if we do not preach faith alone 
for salvation, no one is saved ; but if we preach 
a faith which does not obey, we preach that 
which nullifies the faith which saves us. And 
this is no fanciful danger, for the tendency 
with us when assured of salvation, is to relax 
and become cold and neglectful, and if it were 
not for trials and temptations and chastise- 
ments and sore adversities, the best of Chris- 
tians would soon sink down in carnal sloth and 
security. The law then is to be fulfilled by us 
— ^we are to be *^ zealous of good works" — ^we 
are to ^^be careful to maintain them for neces- 
sary uses." Good works are also to be per- 
formed with regard to the reward which is 
promised; for while they cannot be rewarded 
for any merit since they are only our duty and 



110 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

since grace works them in ns and not we our- 
selves (Tsa. 26: 12), yet they will be and must 
be rewarded for the sake of the promise, i. e., 
because God has promised to reward what He 
Himself does by our hands as if we had done 
it, and we are bound upon the ground of that 
free promise to look for *Hhe recompense of 
the reward'' (Heb. 11:26), and if we do not 
look for it we do God dishonor and sin against 
our own fruitfulness. Titus 3:8; Eph. 2 : 10 ; 
I Tim. 2:10; I Tim. 6:18; Titus 2:7; Titus 
2:14; I Pet. 2:12; James 2:20. 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
^*Let no man think he understands this com- 
mandment," says Luther, and well does he say 
it, for it is much easier to observe the external 
forms and duties of religion, than it is to feel 
and act as one ought toward his fellow. A man 
may apparently be very pious and yet secretly 
he may be a defrauder — a falsifier of trusts — 
a greedy, hard and grinding creditor — a cheat 
in trade — a mean Satanic and insinuating slan- 
derer — a very serpent in malice, envious and 
jealous of his neighbor and hating him to the 
very death. There is no such test of religion 
as is temper — as are the secret feelings. Do I 
love my neighbor? — 

As thyself: How do I love myself? There 
is my standard. — How do I feel when I myself 
have been slandered or set aside, or imposed 



LIBEETY AND LAW 111 

upon, or made the fool or the victim of some 
practical joke? How would I like it? Do we 
want a standard, a model, a copy for conduct? 
''As thyself meets the case. 

Vs. 15. But if ye lite and devour one an- 
other, **When dogs and wolves bite one an- 
other,'' says a quaint writer, ^Hhat is accord- 
ing to their nature, but it is sad indeed when 
sheep take to biting one another. I would 
rather be bitten by a dog outside the fold, than 
by a sheep in it. The bite of a fellow Christian 
is sharper than any other. ' ' 

TaUe heed that ye he not consumed one of 
another. Strife, contention, bickering, detrac- 
tion and the biting of hard, unjust exasperating 
words will rend a church in pieces quicker than 
all the assaults of men and devils from outside. 

**How sweet and heavenly is the sight 
When those who love the Lord, 
In one another's peace unite 
And so fulfill His word; — 

When each can feel his brother's sigh. 

And with him bear a part, 
When sorrows flow from eye to eye, 

And joy from heart to heart. 

Love is the golden chain that binds 

The happy souls above; 
And he's an heir of heaven who finds 

His bosom glow with love." 



WOEKS OF THE FLESH 
'FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT 



WOEKS OF THE FLESH— FRUITS OF 
THE SPIRIT 

GALATiANs V — (Continued,) 

The apostle having spoken of the law as still 
immutable and binding and of the necessity of 
its fulfilment, and having shown that this fulfil- 
ment is, in a single word, reducible to love ; now 
goes on to show how such a love can be devel- 
oped — how such a fulfilment can be accom- 
plished. The law remains a principle and 
while, in one sense it may be said to be over us 
because it rules everywhere and because no al- 
lowance can be made for its breaking, yet in 
another and transcendent sense, the law is un- 
der us and not we under the law — i. e., the 
Spirit which has entered into and controls us, 
so rises above the letter that the letter is lost 
out of sight while a nobler Object replaces it. 
We fulfil the law not by looking at the law but 
at Christ. Heb. 12:2; Phil. 3:12, 13, 14. 

When Blondin walked upon a tight rope 
across the Genesee just in front of the falls, a 
star was placed at the end of the rope and on 
that star Blondin fia:ed his eyes and walked suc- 
cessfully. Had he once looked down at his feet 
and at the rope beneath him he would have 
fallen 120 feet into the chasm. So the apostle 
says: The law is to be fulfilled but the law is 

115 



116 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

not the thing you look at — ^you look at Christ 
who has fulfilled it for you — Christ is the Star 
at the end of the rope. Eom. 6 : 15 ; I Cor. 
9:20; Gal. 3:25; Gal. 5:18; Col. 3:1-3; Eom. 
7:6. 

Vs. 16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit. 
He does not say Walk in the law, yet he would 
have said so were the law the means and power 
of holiness. On the contrary, ^Hhe letter kill- 
eth'^ — looking at the law and living by the law 
means nothing but condemnation and failure 
and death. What is wanted is life — '^the Spirit 
giveth life," (II Cor. 3:6). The Holy Ghost 
is the power. Do not disturb the rail track, the 
law; run on wheels above it, armed with faith 
and winged by love. 

Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the 
lusts of the flesh. Here is brought into sharp 
contrast the two natures in the believer : the old 
nature which we brought into the world with 
us, which is only depravity and corruption ; and 
the new nature which cannot sin because it is 
born of God (I John 3:9). The presence of 
these two natures obliges a strife which the nat- 
ural man does not know — an internecine war. 
Ishmael is at peace in the tent until Isaac comes 
in, but from that moment Isaac grows until he 
gets the upper hand, and by and by the tent of 
mortality falls and Ishmael is forever cast out. 
Eom. 6:11; Col. 3:5. 



WOEKS OF THE FLESH 117 

Our inbred sin requires 

Our flesh to see the dust; 
Yet since the Lord our Saviour lives 

So all His members must. 

Ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. You 
have them. The flesh is in the believer, al- 
though the believer is not in the flesh (Eom. 
8:9), and the flesh in the believer is quite as 
bad as any other flesh — ^not an atom of good- 
ness is in it nor possibility of goodness. Born 
of the old serpent, onr father the devil, the 
fallen nature in us is nothing but a writhing 
serpent capable of nothing but venom and a 
crook. Nothing but what is evil can come from 
man. All spiritual good must come from the 
Spirit. * ' Where then, ' ' says Calvin, * ^ shall we 
find a drop of goodness in man's free will; un- 
less we call that good which God calls evil, for 
the carnal mind is enmity against God." It is 
enmity and only enmity and enmity in quint- 
essence. And although there have appeared in 
unrenewed men instances of gentleness, integ- 
rity and generosity, it is certain that they were 
only * * specious disguises ' ' like the brilliant col- 
ors of a snake which in themselves are beauti- 
ful but which are all the more horrible from 
their inseparable connection with the reptile 
who shows them. Heb. 11 : 6 ; Eom. 14 : 23. 

Ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. The 



118 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

apostle does not say there is no flesh in them — 
no lust, nor that they shall do no sinful action 
— both which are true only of Christ, but that 
they shall not give up to the flesh to be under it, 
or to lusts as an impulse, a power. ^^Not that 
they do not sin,'' says Dr. Gill, '^but that they 
do not make a trade of it. ' ' 

Vs. 17. For the -flesh lusteth against the 
Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: and these 
are contrary the one to the other so that ye can- 
not (or rather so that ye may not) do the things 
that ye would. That which is born of the flesh 
is flesh and wills in one direction. That which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit and wills in the 
counter direction in order that the believer may 
not do the things which he would do, if left to 
himself. See here the Greek, hina me ha an 
thelete. 

Vs. 18. But if ye he led of the Spirit ye are 
not under the law. Whatever our success in 
battling with our depraved inclinations, it is 
never absolute and perfect. We cannot per- 
fectly keep the law; our recourse then is to be 
led of the Spirit which animates us above the 
mere letter so that we are not under the law, 
but walk — so to say — above it, free from a con- 
demning conscience. And this, since God ac- 
cepts our imperfect and defective obedience as 
if it were perfect and without a flaw, being cov- 
ered as it is and hidden under the white and 
shining righteousness of Christ, which like a 



WORKS OF THE FLESH 119 

clond, covers God's people as the broadly ex- 
panding ''pillar" covered the entire camp of 
Israel. The snn could not smite Israel because 
of the cloud, and the justice of God cannot smite 
us because of the interposed screen of Christ's 
righteousness. 

Vs. 19. Now the worhs of the flesh. The 
''flesh" does not mean the body, although it 
uses the body, but the flesh means the fallen na- 
ture of man — all that he is and brings with him 
into the world. It includes then all his facul- 
ties higher and lower — ^intellect, affections, con- 
science and will which are tainted with sin. 
The apostle describes it in Romans VIII : 7 as 
the carnal mind which will not and the enmity 
which cannot please God. It is the "old 
Adam" in whom is no atom nor scintilla of 
goodness. 

Noiv the works of the flesh are manifest. 
The flesh shows what it is by its works. Lovely 
as the Belladonna, it is still rank poison. The 
catalogue appended is inclusive of all the flesh 
can be or do. 

Which are these: Adultery, fornication, un- 
cleanness, lasciviousness. He begins with sen- 
sual sins, then he proceeds to the intellectual. 
The disease of fallen nature betrays itself in 
restlessness. It is never content with what it 
at present possesses, wife, or lover, purity or 
proper enjoyment. 



120 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

*'The things forbidden we always desire, 
And things most denied we seek to acquire." 

Vs. 20. Idolatry J witchcraft. With wanton- 
ness always goes profanity. The vision of God 
is lost to the impure. They seek help else- 
where than from God — from the occult, from 
philtres, from charms, from mediums, magic 
and demons. The devil is an ** unclean spirit" 
and the unclean associate with him. 

Vs. 21. Hatred, variance, wrath, seditions. 
The two extremes of nature are sensuality and 
murder. The pendulum swings between these. 
**The worship of the beautiful ends in an orgy." 
Shechem admires Dinah and defiles her. Am- 
non ruins Tamar and drives her from his house 
in anger. 

Heresies, These are the result of a miserable 
self conceit which sets itself up a critic and 
judge of Divine revelation. 

Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings. 
Envy is the effect of that mad ambition which, 
instead of submitting itself to the will of God 
and looking only to the glory of God, must al- 
ways run a rivalship with others and be grieved 
by every excellence except its own. It is a 
dreadful picture but it covers all the possibili- 
ties of fallen man — of all his works under the 
law. 

Vs. 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, 
joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, 



WORKS OF THE FLESH 121 

faith, meekness, temperance. Here is the 
blessed contrast. There are nine grapes in this 
heavenly cluster. Three toward God: Love, 
Joy, Peace. Three toward my neighbor : Long 
suffering, Gentleness, Goodness. Three as re- 
gards myself: Faith, Meekness, Temperance or 
self-control. And to show that these all, are 
but varied expressions of the one Love which 
fulfils the law, we may say as has been said 
that Joy is love exulting; Peace is love in re- 
pose; Long suffering is love on trial; Gentle- 
ness is love in society; Goodness is love in ac- 
tion; Faith is love in endurance; Meekness is 
love at school; and Temperance is love in dis- 
cipline and training — so then it is Love in all 
the cluster and the circle of the Christian 
graces. 

Against such there is no law. Against the 
others — ^*the works of the flesh," there is a 
law. **They which do such things shall not in- 
herit the kingdom of God!'^ But against these 
fruits and those who do them there is no longer 
any law. They walk at liberty and rejoice in 
hope of the glory of God. 

''Guide me Thou great Jehovah, 

Pilgrim through this barren land; 
I am weak, but Thou art mighty, 
Hold me with Thy powerful hand ; 
Bread of heaven 
Peed me, till I want no more. 



122 ORACE IN GALATIANS 

''Open now the crystal Fountain, 

Whence the healing streams do flow; 
Let the fiery cloudy pillar 

Lead me all my journey through; 
Strong Deliverer 
Be Thou still my strength and shield." 



SOWING AND EEAPINa 



SOWING AND EEAPINa 

GALATIANS VI 

From errors of doctrine, the apostle in the 
epistle, proceeds to faults of life. Having 
enumerated the works of the flesh and having 
shown that the flesh contends with the indwell- 
ing Spirit and at times overcomes it, he en- 
joins upon the Galatians a gentle and tender 
treatment of those, their fellow Christians who 
may be overtaken in a fault — i. e., beguiled and 
cheated by Satan and their carnal passions into 
conduct unbecoming their high and heavenly 
calling ; and this he does more naturally in con- 
nection with the caution in the last verse of the 
preceding chapter against **vain glory," or the 
disposition inherent in every man to wish to be 
something or somebody, and so to set himself 
up over others and plume himself as being 
something superior in conduct or in moral prin- 
ciple to others. 

Vs. 1. Brethren, if a man he overtaken in a 
fault; if it come as a surprise and he be seized 
or ever he is aware, and carried away by temp- 
tation — a thing not at all impossible — as wit- 
ness James 3:2; I Kings 8:46; Eccl. 7:20; 
Prov. 24:16-18. 

Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one 

125 



126 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

in the spirit of meekness: ''A sentence full of 
heavenly comfort is this," says Luther, ** which 
once delivered me, when in terrible trouble, 
from death. For since the saints in this life do 
not only live in the flesh, but now and then also 
fulfil the lusts of the flesh by falling into impa- 
tience and error and wrath and envy and doubt- 
ing and such like and other grievous sins, St. 
Paul teaches how such men, when they have 
fallen should be dealt with — ^viz. : in the spirit 
of meekness/' That does not mean, of course, 
that their fault should be condoned, but that 
they should be led to see their fault and deplore 
it and when seen to be sorry for their offences, 
restored to confidence. (II Cor. 2:7). The 
restoration here, katartizete, refers to the care- 
ful replacing of a dislocated bone bringing it 
back to its normal condition. 

Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one. 
The closer a man walks with God himself, the 
more fit is he to deal with sinners because he 
has a tender and a pitiful conscience. Those 
who are themselves guilty are always hardest 
upon like offenders, and always readiest to cast 
a stone. John 8 : 3, 4 ; 7-8. 

Considering thyself, lest thou also he tempted. 
There is no sin that ever was committed that 
was not due to my fallen nature and that I, 
having that nature, might not commit if left a 
moment to myself. ^^He fell yesterday," said 



SOWING AND REAPING 127 

one of the Fathers, *^I may fall to-day.'' Read 
the Psalms of David and they translate you to 
heaven. Mark David himself and you will hear 
him cry: *^ Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, 
God, Thou God of my salvation. ' ' Oh how gen- 
tle, oh how pitiful, oh how tender in his spirit 
should he be, who is called to deal with souls 
sore tempted and betrayed, the prey of their 
' ' deceitful lusts. ' ' Eph. 4 : 22. 

Vs. 2. Bear ye one another's burdens. Take 
one another's sorrows, griefs, afflictions and 
hardships to heart. This has been beautifully 
expressed in the lines of that hymn so precious 
in its hallowed recollections, 

''Blest be the tie that binds 

Our hearts in Christian love ; 
The fellowship of kindred minds, 
Is like to that above. 

We share our mutual woes. 

Our mutual burdens bear, 
And often for each other flows 

The sympathizing tear. ' ' 

And so fulfil the law of Christ. Are you 
talking about law? That is the law fulfiled; 
for Love is the fulfiling of the law. Gal. 5 : 14. 

Vs. 3, 4. For if a man think himself to he 
something y when he is nothing y he deceiveth him- 
self. But let every man prove his own work 



128 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

and then shall he have rejoicing in himself y 
alone and not in another. In other words, Let 
every man mind his own business without med- 
dling with the business of his neighbor and 
then he shall have satisfaction in what he has 
himself been enabled to accomplish without 
crowing over his neighbor. 

Vs. 5. For every man shall hear his own bur- 
den, — ^i. e., his own responsibility before God. 

Vs. 6, 7. Let him that is taught in the Word 
communicate unto him that teacheth in all good 
things. Be not deceived; God is not mocJced: 
for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap. In another place (II Cor. 9:6), speaking 
to the same point he says: **He that soweth 
sparingly shall reap also sparingly." St. Paul 
thus lays it down as a principle that spiritual 
benefits demand a quid pro quo, **Let him that 
is taught in the Word, communicate." Not 
that any price can be put upon the transcendent 
truths of the Gospel, but that men set apart 
to preach the Gospel have a just and righteous 
claim on those to whom they preach it, for gen- 
erous compensation and support. And that, 
not in the way of donation parties and excep- 
tional gratuities, but as a sacred deht — a debt 
which men refuse to discharge at the peril of 
their souls. For let us not be deceived, God 
is not mocked. A man may keep back the 
tenth of his income and give almost nothing 



SOWING AND KEAPING 129 

for the support of the Gospel, and no man may 
know of his meanness or of his disregard of 
God's ministers and of their office; but God 
Himself is not deceived in the matter. His eye 
rims down the columns of every man's ledger 
and ciphers out to the figure every man's earn- 
ings, and the day will come when that ledger 
will flash fire in the eyes of the defrauder and 
hypocrite and the cheaper he has made the Gos- 
pel the lighter will he weigh in Eternity's 
scales. It is of no use to say: *^I love the Gos- 
pel," and ^*I love the ministers of Christ," if 
I can look with complacency upon fields desti- 
tute of the Gospel and allow Christ's uncom- 
plaining servants to go suffering and thread- 
bare. **0h," says one, *Hhey don't need it." 
Yes but you need it and God requires it and 
spend your income on yourself alone, if you 
dare. I Cor. 9 : 14, 15. 

Vs. 8. For he that soweth to his flesh shall 
of the flesh reap corruption: The apostle here 
broadens the sowing from contributions to sup- 
port the Gospel to all other obligations and 
solemnities of life. '*He that soweth to his 
flesh:" We recognize it as a law of the nat- 
ural world that whatever seed a man sows, he 
must expect a return in kind. If he sows po- 
tatoes he does not look for cabbages, and if he 
sows tares he does not look for wheat. He will 
get what he sows and he knows he can count 



130 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

upon this. Precisely so is it in the spiritual 
world. If a man sows covetousness he will end 
in pilfering and theft. If a man sows dissipa- 
tion he will reap disease and early death. If 
he sows the neglect of Church attendance, he 
and his family will end in moral shipwreck and 
ruin. If he sows fault finding with the Bible 
he will end in being an atheist. And further, 
— he will reap more than he sows. He sows 
grains, he reaps bushels. He sows a handful 
of wild oats at 17 and it is acres at 25, and a 
continent at 50. A man's conduct comes home 
to him. Jacob deceives his father Isaac and is 
himself deceived in Leah. David sins with 
Bathsheba and his whole palace from that hour 
becomes a moral pest house. Incest, murder, 
wholesale adultery under the light of the noon- 
day sun follow one another in awful tragedies 
of horror. ^'The Curse of Cumberland" fol- 
lows the assassin's stab in each succeeding age. 
But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap life everlasting. Here is the blessed 
contrast. Sowing to the Spirit! That is a 
quiet work. *^ Blessed is he that soweth beside 
all waters" : he moves along beside the smoothly 
flowing streams that irrigate the soil. To 
change the figure, ^^His delight is in the law of 
the Lord ; and in His law doth he meditate day 
and night. And he shall be like a tree planted 
by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his 



SOWING AND EEAPING 131 

fruit in his season: his leaf also shall not 
wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall pros- 
per. ' ' The Bible, meditation and prayer — here 
is the secret of a useful life and an enlarged 
eternity. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, 
i. e., in a clearer knowledge of the righteousness 
of Christ. Begin with Christ. Keep Christ 
before you. Keep in communion with Christ. 
Make Him the Finisher, as He is the Author of 
faith. — Begin with broken-heartedness and a 
profound humility. ^^Sow to yourselves in 
righteousness, reap in mercy,'' (Hosea 10: 
12). ^^In mercy," for it is mercy that bestows 
the grace which fructifies the soul. 

Vs. 9. And let us not he weary in well do-\/^^ 
ing: for in due season we shall reap if ive faint' 
not. Ps. 126:5, 6. 

**Let him who sows in sadness wait 
Till the fair harvest come; 
He shall confess his sheaves are great, 
And shout the harvest home ! ' ' 



THE CEOSS ALONE 
THE GLOEY 



THE CEOSS ALONE THE GLORY 

GALATIAN^S VI 

The apostle having spoken in the previous 
verses of this chapter of the relation which a 
Christian bears to his fellows, nrges npon the 
Galatians the duty of the widest benevolence. 

Vs. 10. As we have therefore opportunity, 
let us do good unto all men; The word ' there- 
fore'' emphasizes two great and pressing mo- 
tives — one, Because the reward is certain — the 
other, Because the opportunity is short. 

L The Eeward is certain — **In due season 
we shall reap, if we faint not." This does not 
mean that we are justified by works or that 
good works can have any possible merit before 
God. They cannot have, for 

1. No creature can merit, since when he has 
done his utmost, he has done nothing more than 
what, as a creature, he is bound to do. In this 
respect a worm can merit as truly as can an 
Archangel. 

2. No fallen creature can merit for 

(1) He can do nothing good but by grace — 
if grace does it in him, how can he lay any 
claim as having done it himself? Isa. 26:12. 

(2) No fallen creature can merit, for his 
works at the best are imperfect. But the law 

135 



136 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

demands perfection and God can call nothing 
that is imperfect, perfect. The best thing 
therefore that any fallen creature can think, 
feel, or perform is damnable because it falls 
short of perfection and is stained with sin. 

(3) If a fallen creature's works were per- 
fect, yet that is only his duty, and, to merit, 
one must outrun mere duty and bring God into 
his debt. ^ ' Duty will be merit, ' ' says Melville, 
*^when debt is donation." The Eeward there- 
fore is ours not because we have earned it, but 
because God as a mere gratuity has promised 
that in due season we shall reap if we faint not. 

II. Let us do good because the Opportunity 
is short. We have it now but shall not always 
have it. We have the light now but may here- 
after be clouded — the strength now but here- 
after may be inJ&rm. 

Especially unto them who are of the house- 
hold of faith. The apostle here recognizes a 
relationship more sacred than any of the other 
relationships of life — a family above all other 
families — '^the household of faith." 

Vs. 11. Ye see in ivhat large letters I have 
written unto you with mine own hand, St. 
Paul here stresses with peculiar emphasis the 
admonitions given to the Galatian saints. In 
their case he makes a singular exception. He 
writes this epistle himself. Other epistles, as 
we learn from their subscriptions, were written 



THE CEOSS ALONE THE GLOEY 137 

by an amanuensis as for example Tertins, 
Stephanas, Titns and others. But this epistle 
he writes himself and referring perhaps to his 
blindness as in chapter IV: 13-15 — Acts 22:11 
(a chronic weakness of the eyes as the result 
of the heavenly vision), he adds : I have written 
pehJcois grammatois, in large and uncouth char- 
acters which betray the intensity of my earnest- 
ness despite my infirmity. In no epistle is the 
apostle so vehement. The Epistle to the Gala- 
tians is the death blow to every system of rit- 
ual, ceremony, merits and works. 

Vs. 12. As many as desire to mahe a fair 
show in the fleshy they constrain you to he cir- 
cumcised; only lest they should suffer persecu- 
tion for the cross of Christ. The doctrines of 
Grace do certainly separate those who preach 
and hold them from the great body of the nom- 
inal, professing and popular Church. To boldly 
proclaim and defend these doctrines means sin- 
gularity and singularity means ostracism and 
this the flesh-pleasing flatterers of the Gala- 
tians would by all means avoid. They there- 
fore labored to relax the doctrine and to oblit- 
erate as much as possible the sharp outlines of 
demarkation which the preaching of Christ cru- 
cified inevitably draws between the Church and 
the world. 

Vs. 13. For neither they themselves who are 
circumcised keep the law. This is notoriously 



138 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

true of the ceremonialist and ritualist. He is 
never a Puritan. "Witness the morale of Eus- 
sia, of Italy, of Spain. *^ These courtly pseudo 
apostles,'* says Calvin, ** pronounce that the de- 
crees of Holy Church must be observed with 
reverence. Yet what is their practice? They 
pay no more regard to any decisions of the 
Eoman See than to the braying of an ass, pro- 
vided they run no personal risks in their self 
pleasing." 

But desire to have you circumcised that they 
may glory in your flesh, i. e., that they may 
point to you as their recruits and proselytes — 
that they may boast their large congregations 
and their millionaire members: their splendid 
pageantry; their multiplied activities; their 
growing influence as over against the sound doc- 
trine, the simple service and the Scriptural 
methods which everywhere and always are the 
accompaniment of a pure Gospel. 

Vs. 14. But God forbid that I should glory, 
save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
St. Paul found nothing in himself, his suffer- 
ings, his visions, his record, in which to glory. 
But one Object stood before him — the Cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. This, to the apostle, 
was the highest marvel of God — the miracle of 
the universe — the concentration of eternal 
thought — the focus of infinite decree — the out- 
pouring of infinite love — the hinge of two des- 



THE CROSS ALONE THE GLORY 139 

tinies — ^the pivot on which hangs the ages. Any- 
other glorying than in the cross he holds to be 
the worst of crimes. **God forbid!" he cries. 
Imagine a poor lost and sinful creature stand- 
ing up in front of the crucified Son of God and 
boasting his merits — ^what he himself is and 
what he has done! Could pride be more 
Satanic? Could blasphemy be more appalling? 
The cross it is — Not the incarnation; not the 
resurrection; not the Lamb enthroned. What 
chains the apostle — ^what rivets all his gaze is 
Substitution". He dies that I may live; He 
takes my place in condemnation, that I may 
take His place in acquittal and glory. By sim- 
ple faith in Him, I, who deserve to die eternally, 
pass from death unto life. fact incompre- 
hensible but real. revelation overwhelming 
and sublime. 

'* Calvary's wonders let us trace, 
Justice magnified in grace ; 
Mark those purple streams and say, 
There my sins were washed away." 

By whom the world is crucified unto me and I 
unto the world, St. Paul distinguishes this epis- 
tle by signalizing it in his four crucifixion^s : 

1. He is crucified to the law — dead to it by 
the body of Christ. He has paid the law's pen- 
alty in his Substitute. Gal. II : 19 and 20. See 
also Rom. 7 : 6, where the proper rendering is, 



140 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

•we are delivered from the law, heing dead to 
that wherein we were held. (See also the raar- 
gin.) 

2. He has crucified the flesh — hung it up, by- 
faith, upon the cross, so that, although the flesh 
is in him, he is not in the flesh but is out of it 
and has left it — the old nature, behind him on 
the cross, while he, in practice and in thought 
lives in the Spirit and in resurrection. Gal. 
5:24; Eom. 6:14. 

3. The World is crucified to him. If my 
dearest friend were lying dead in the parlor, 
struck down by the knife of an assassin, could 
I enjoy that parlor or the thought of that as- 
sassin? So did the world which had done his 
Saviour to death, seem to St. Paul. So to him 
seemed the entire scene of the present exist- 
ence. 

4. He is crucified to the world. He has 
done with its hopes, its ambitions, its rivalries, 
its pleasures, its honors — he can say 

'*I thirst, but not as once I did, 

The vain delights of earth to share; 
Thy wounds, Immanuel, all forbid 
That I should find my pleasures there. 

It was the sight of Thy dear Cross 

First weaned my soul from earthly things, 

And taught me to esteem as dross 

The mirth of fools, the pomp of kings/' 



THE CEOSS ALONE THE GLOEY 141 

15. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision 
availeth anything nor uncircumcisio:yi, 'hut a 
new creature. That is the point, the "^^new 
creature'' — Ye must be born again. No show 
of an outward performance can take the place 
of this. John 3 : 3, 6, 7 ; II Cor. 5 : 17. 

Vs. 16. And as many as walk according to 
this rule: i. e., the rule of the new creature — 
above the law and justified by faith. 

Peace he on them and mercy and on the Israel 
of God, i. e., upon the true Israel as distin- 
guished from the circumcised and ecclesiastical 
Israel — the church invisible as distinguished 
from the system which is seen. 

Vs. 17. From henceforth let no man trouhle 
me — throw hindrances in my way — for I hear 
in my hody the marks of the Lord Jesus. Not 
the stigmata of St. Francis Assisi — but the evi- 
dent tokens, in the revelations made him and 
in his trials and victories, of the ownership and 
approval of Christ. 

Vs. 18. Brethren the grace of our Lord Je- 
sus Christ he with your spirit. Amen. He 
ends the epistle as he began it, with '* grace." 

^^Be with your spirit.'^ *'His prayer is,'' 
says Calvin, ^^not only that God may bestow 
upon them His grace in large measure, but that 
they may have a proper feeling of it in their 
hearts. Then only is it truly enjoyed by us 
when it comes to our spirit,'* 



142 GRACE IN GALATIANS 

*'Our blest Redeemer ere He breathed 
His tender last farewell, 
A Guide, a comforter bequeathed 
With us to dwell. 

Spirit of purity and grace 

Our weakness pitying see; 
Oh make our hearts Thy dwelling place 
And meet for thee ! ' ' Amen. 

SOLI DEO GLORIA! 



APPENDIX 

1 Judas and St. Paul, The substitute for Ju- 
das — the one who takes his vacant 
place is St. Paul. Not Matthias. 
Matthias was the suggestion of Peter 
and Peter made mistakes. He made 
a mistake when he said **Be it far 
from Thee, Lord. ' ' He made a mis- 
take when he denied his Master. 
He made a mistake at Antioch when 
he overturned the Gospel and taught 
circumcision: building again the 
things which he had destroyed. '^I 
withstood him to the face/' says St. 
Paul, * * because he was to be blamed. ' ' 
Impetuous Peter steps forward to 
make an Apostle. He gives the 
Lord, so to say, a choice between 
two, Matthias and Justus. The lot 
falls on Matthias and they number 
him with the twelve and that is all 
that is ever heard of him. For 
Matthias no Divine call or sanction 
anywhere appears. Nowhere is it 
written: ''The Holy Ghost said, Sep- 
arate unto Me Matthias.'' No- 
where is it said of Matthias ''He 
chose 12 of whom He named apos- 



146 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

ties." This is distinctively said of 
St. Paul. 

As for the affair of Matthias, the 
Lord keeps silent. By and by He 
comes down from heaven and Him- 
self in Person calls, and adds to the 
original eleven, another twelfth 
'apostle, ^*one born out of due time." 
The twelfth name on the *^ twelve 
foundations of the New Jerusalem" 
will not be that of Matthias but of 
St. Paul not only an apostle but 
*^not a whit behind the very Chief- 
est Apostles" though in himself, 
nothing. 

That the vacancy in the Apostolate 
was thus held waiting for Paul is 
evident from the fact that the Lord 
Jesus after His resurrection shewed 
Himself to the eleven, and that, on 
this very occasion, in giving the 
names of the apostles present in the 
'^ upper room," the names of eleven 
only are given, as if expressly to ex- 
clude Matthias. Not a hint is given 
anywhere of the Lord's commission- 
ing or recognizing or especially 
using Matthias. He wrote no epis- 
tle. About one-half of the New 
Testament was written by St. Paul. 



APPENDIX 147 

''But does not St. Paul himself, 
afterward in I Cor. 15:5, say: 'He 
was seen of Cephas, then of the 
twelve'? What twelve, if not Mat- 
thias!" The answer is easy. St. 
Paul speaks in general terms. 
''The apostles collectively after the 
apostasy of Jndas," says Dr. Hodge 
(see Commentary), are spoken of 
as the twelve according to a common 
usage, although at the time there 
were only eleven." At the time re- 
ferred to in I Cor. 15:5 (see John 
20:19), Matthias was not even 
dreamed of. The emphasis which 
St. Paul puts upon his claim to be 
one of the 12 apostles is due to the 
necessity of , asserting and main- 
taining his full apostolic authority 
and commission as an infallible 
teacher and organizer of the Church. 
2 Eighteousness with St. Paul has two mean- 
ings 

1 The Rectitude of God. 

2 Much more frequently, Perfect Con- 

formity to law: diJcaioma means law- 
obedience. 

3 Justice with St. Paul is suum cuique 

trihiiere: to render to each exactly 
his deserts. 



148 GEACE IN GALATIANS 

4 **The wages of sin/' i. e., its exact and 

necessary deserts, '4s death." 

5 To ' 'justify" is to declare a sinner 

righteous, on the ground of the right- 
eousness of Christ or His perfect 
conformity to law, imputed to that 
sinner and regarded as his own. 

6 If Christ's obedience is regarded as 

my obedience, then justice requires 
that I shall get the deserts due to 
Christ, in exchange for His having 
suffered the deserts due to me. 

7 We are justified, actually by Christ's 

obedience or righteousness; instru- 
mentally by faith. The expression 
is ek pisteos, or dia pisteos, or sim- 
ply pisteoSj the genitive, ^^hy^' faith: 
never ''on the account of faith" 
which would compel the accusation, 
dia pistin. 



THE DOCTKINES OF GEACE 

BY 

George Sayles Bishop, D. D. 

Cloth $1.00 net. 

(Opinions of the Press and Eminent Men) 

The Eomiletic Review says of it: "The scholarship of this 
book is that of a deep student of the text of Scripture and a 
scholastic and metaphysical theologian. He gives us a compre- 
hensive apologetic of Calvinism — not the modified kind of the 
modern man, but the Calvinism of Calvin and Edwards. Not 
since the days of the Puritan writers of New England or the 
days of Old-School-New-School controversies has so scholarly 
and thorough a work in defence of Calvinism appeared. To 
many it will seem preferable to the diluted and inconsistent 
theology which is often unfairly exploited under Calvin's 
name." 

The Chrjstian Union Herald (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania) 
says: "The author is not afraid to proclaim the old Calvin- 
istic doctrine, yet his manner of presentation is free from 
harshness and severity. He shows most conclusively that if 
the salvation of the individual does not originate in the heart 
of God it will never originate. A thorough heart study of 
these doctrines will put iron into your moral and spiritual 
fibre." 

The Alabama Baptist says: "Dr. Bishop believes divine 
Election underlies religion as it underlies revelation. With 
Toplady he believes it is the golden thread which runs through 
the whole Christian system. If you have been swimming 
around in the shallow pool of the new theology it will benefit 
you to take a plunge into the depths of the old theology." 

The Sword and Trowel, Spurgeon's Magazine, says of it: 
"So long as America can produce this kind of preaching she 
will be a witness to the world in these degenerate times. Dr. 
Bishop simply exults in enforcing the truth loved of Calvin, 
Whitfield and Spurgeon and declares it with no bated breath. 

The Christian Nation, Organ of the Covenanters, says: 
"The author of this magnificent book builds as high as can be 
reached by God's grace. His testimony to the true and un- 
changing character of the Scriptures is inspiring and carries 
conviction with every point he makes." 

"One does not often, in these days, come on a book which 



contains so many vital themes and treats of the Doctrines of 
Grace in such an uncompromising way. It is worth its price 
many times over." 

The Independent says of it: "Dr. Bishop is the ablest and 
most brilliant of all the preachers who cling to the extreme 
doctrines of Augustine, Anselm and Calvin. With him, salva- 
tion comes wholly by free grace with no admixture of free 
will." 

Record of Christian Work. — ^Northfleld, Mass. — "These ser- 
mons are an out and out exposition of a theological position 
that is not often met with in these days. The reader will 
concede that these sermons are not froth nor sentiment but 
logical, doctrinal and unmistakable in their theology. The 
conceptions of God seem a little overawing to the average 
Christian of to-day." 

Christian Intelligencer. — "It will cheer and encourage many 
a Christian to perceive the wholeheartedness and implicit faith 
with which the Doctor receives and defends the 'old-fashioned* 
but ever new and true doctrines of the Divine grace and 
mercy." 

SBUT UP TO FAITH 

BY 

George Sayles Bishop, D. D. 
A venerable minister came to me one day and said: "I owe 
you, under God, a debt of gratitude. I have a son who long 
has lived an unconverted life and been a burden on my heart. 
He would not come to hear me preach, but was utterly care- 
less. One Sabbath night I said to him: 'Do come to church 
to-night.' *No, father,' was the answer, 'not to-night.' 'Well, 
my dear son,' said I, 'if not, do promise me to read this ser- 
mon' — ^handing him the above. Said the son, 'I will.' " When 
the father returned from service the son came to the door and 
met him, saying: "Father, I have surrendered to Jesus. / am 
shut up to faith." 

THE PERSON AND WORK 

OF THE 

HOLY SPIRIT 

BY 

George Sayles Bishop, D. D, 
(Published by the Christian and Missionary Alliance) 



MAY Vi !91S 



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